Implementation of Ergonomic Design Interventions to Improve Workplace Amenities for Assam Policewomen
Womanhood issues at workplace with specific reference to basic amenities are major problem in the police duties. This paper looks into the womanhood specific issues at Police Stations. Personal interview and individual responses to a subjective assessment
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Abstract Womanhood issues at workplace with specific reference to basic amenities are major problem in the police duties. This paper looks into the womanhood specific issues at Police Stations. Personal interview and individual responses to a subjective assessment questionnaire were recorded from forty policewomen of different ranks posted in Guwahati, Assam (N = 40, purposive non-probability sampling) to have their views on these issues. A thorough scrutiny of the actual situation revealed critical lack of facilities and basic amenities for policewomen (pertinent to womanhood) at workplace, i.e. the general police stations. Analysis of the responses reflected policewomen to be under stress at their outdoor duties and workplace also, specifically due to the lack of privacy and conveniences facilities. This piece of work depicts the views and feelings of policewomen before and after implementation of proposed design interventions in an existing police station, there by improvement of their occupational wellbeing. Keywords Womanhood issues in police force station amenities Occupational wellbeing
Convenience facilities Police
S. Bora (&) A. Chatterjee S. Karmakar D. Chakrabarti Ergonomics Laboratory, Department of Design, IIT Guwahati, Guwahati, Assam, India e-mail: [email protected] A. Chatterjee e-mail: [email protected] S. Karmakar e-mail: [email protected] D. Chakrabarti e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 A. Chakrabarti and D. Chakrabarti (eds.), Research into Design for Communities, Volume 1, Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies 65, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-3518-0_19
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1 Introduction Women contributions in law enforcement have progressed tremendously during the last three decades. Globally (as stated by UN women report, 2011), a standard of just 9% of the police is women, with rates declining as low as 2% in some divisions of the globe. On average, women do not encompass more than 13% of the gross police force in any region. In nearly all developed countries, women make up to 25% of the total force. Police job have traditionally been dominated by males. However, with more and more females entering the workforce and more prominence being placed on equivalent opportunity hiring, there has been a vast increase in the number of women becoming police [1]. Barely 6.11% of the total police force in the India is initiated for Women in the Police Force as reported by CHRI [2] and recently Government of India has reserved 33% women in force. Consequently, an effective and efficient workplace for policewomen along with safety and proper convenience facility in such police stations (previously suited the male predominant job) has become imperative for their occupational wellbeing. Occupational stress of a police is a widespread problem because of its various negative effects on individuals and on police organizations, where stress is considered as the one of the principal factors [3, 4]. The Parliamentary Committee on the
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