| Abstract [eng] |
The Master's thesis "Analysis of Policewomen’s Experiences and Representations: The Case of Lithuania" analyses policewomen's experiences and photographic representations of them. The police is an organisation that carries out a specific mission in society – to prevent crime and to ensure peaceful and orderly community interaction, without the need for military intervention, and with the aim of reducing crime and severe legal punishment. The organisation is distinguishable from other formations by its clear hierarchy, functions, order, rules and culture. The need for the topic of policewomen's experiences and representations is supported by several points. First of all, there is still no scholarly discussion on the aspects of the issues raised in the Master's thesis. Secondly, the topic of gender equality, which would include the questions addressed in this thesis, is particularly relevant at the moment. Finally, not only by reviewing the Lithuanian social network, but also as the research has proceeded, it has become evident that society has a specific and rather critical opinion of female police officers and the police. It is still considered a male institution, and society tends to impose this opinion on those working in the institution. When society imposes an opinion and women police officers hear only criticism of themselves, this is taken for granted and it creates a natural gender gap and inequality. The main issue of the study is that the police are still considered a "male" institution, but, on the other hand, there is an increasing number of women in this institution. It is therefore worthwhile to find out how women policewomen themselves see their working environment and what experiences they gain from working in this institution. The aim of this paper is to examine the social representation of women in the Lithuanian police by comparing it with the analysis of policewomen's own experiences. Methodology. The analysis of experiences and representations of policewomen is based on a two-part study. The first and main part consists of an analysis of 10 semi-structured in-depth interviews with women currently working in the Lithuanian police. The second part focuses on the analysis of the representations of photographs on the official Facebook account of the Lithuanian police. The content of the account is analysed over a period of six months (June 2021 to November 2021). The focus is on 22 posts featuring female officers, focusing on how they are represented in the photographs published on the social media platform. Finally, the women's experiences that emerged during the interviews are compared with the information provided to us by the photos of policewomen represented in the media. As this study is one of the first in the Lithuanian academic field, it would be valuable to recommend that in the future the topic could be developed by conducting interviews not only with women, but also with men and management representatives. This would give a more accurate picture of the institution when comparing the data. It would also be worth looking not only at the Facebook account of the Lithuanian Police, but also at the Lithuanian Police School website as well as the official website of the Lithuanian Police, which would complement the findings. |
