Maternity Rights for Policewomen within the E.C.

In recent years there has been a substantial increase in the number of women police officers, with the same powers and authority as their male colleagues and of the number of women seeking employment within the service. However, despite such changes, the percentage of premature resignations from the police remains higher amongst female than male officers. Police managers acknowledge that such losses are expensive for the service, both in cash terms and loss of experience, thus motivated steps are now being taken to enable women more easily to combine police career and family, for example part-time work, career breaks, job-share etc. However, the availability of such schemes is far from widespread and most are still ‘pilot schemes’. In an attempt to understand why so many policewomen resign prematurely, this article reviews the range of maternity provisions within the E.C. for policewomen.