IPS officer undergoes training at Bradford

London, July 9 (UNI) Indian Police Service officer Anita Punj who is undergoing a three-month Indian Women in Leadership and Management Course at Bradford's Central Police Station, has spent time with the officers to see what life is like for women in the force.

Superintendent Anita Punj is the only police officer among 12 women who have come to Bradford for the course. As part of the course, the 39-year-old officer, who joined the Indian Police Service in Punjab 12 years ago, has been based at Bradford's Central Police Station for two weeks.

She has also visited West Yorkshire Police headquarters in Wakefield and is spending time with Bradford's operational support unit and on patrol with officers. ''The course has been really useful,'' said Suptdt Punj, who qualified as a lawyer before joining the police. ''The fact, it is an all-women course provides you with a different kind of platform,'' she said.

''On many issues the course has been much more open, than if, it had been a mixed group. For example, talking about sexual harassment, I feel women talk about this more freely in an all-women environment.

It's been a great learning experience and has been enriching both personally and professionally,'' she said.

Suptdt Punj currently works with the Indian Police Service's anti-corruption unit, the Vigilance Bureau probing allegations of corruption against civil servants. She has also worked as a police trainer and for the United Nations in Kosovo for more than a year, investigating allegations of violation of the UN's Code of Conduct by international police officers.

As part of the course at the University of Bradford's Centre for International Development, she will complete a 6,000-word project focusing on strategies to counter gender stereotyping within the police.

Suptdt Punj said, ''At my level in India it makes no difference being male or female because they are encouraging women to join the service. Traditionally, policing has been a male-dominated profession and sometimes there is a tendency to assign women the so-called soft' jobs or office jobs. I wanted to look at what kind of strategies have been adopted to counter this tendency.'' The majority of female police officers she spoke to in West Yorkshire have all praised the evolution, especially women who joined the force 20 years ago. ''Most of them have given the credit for this to legislation. Almost everyone agreed there has been an immense change in the past 20 years,'' she added.

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