Paper short abstract:

This paper highlights how Pakistani police women’s understanding of piety and morality, both ritualistic and otherwise, combines with their gender identity to mediate some aspects of their everyday policing, subsequently serving to both weaken and strengthen the police culture in different ways.

Paper long abstract:

Pakistani women form 0.89% of the total police force in the country. Working in a male dominated profession in a patriarchal society, however, is only one of the elements that shape their experience of policing and the nature of their policing. The latter is also influenced by rank, geographical location, the police branch a person is posted in, education, etc. The first half of this paper will highlight how one of these many elements—women's understanding of piety and morality, both ritualistic and otherwise—combines with their gender identity to mediate some aspects of their everyday policing in the different contexts in which they work. Their individual negotiations between these elements sometimes results in some of them making choices that come in the way of their carrying out their duties as effectively as they could. On the other hand, and as the second half of this paper will demonstrate, their moral framework and the understanding of right and wrong that it gives rise to can also, in some instances, support and strengthen a larger police culture with reference to the extrajudicial violence that forms a key part of its functioning. I suggest that these different scenarios can encourage us to look at the complexity of moral frameworks while simultaneously throwing light on how this element constitutes policing in Pakistan.