Women Police and COVID-19 Pandemic in Kashmir

Women police form an integral part of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and have played an important role in the crisis created as a result of COVID-19. They have been working on the frontline with their male counterparts in every area like maintenance of law and order situation by looking for any violations, enforcement of the standard operating procedures (SOPs), protecting healthcare workers, accompanying health workers for the community sampling, awareness of the public, scrutinizing and facilitating the migrants and students, maintaining the databases of COVID-19-positive patients in the communities etc. We have used a qualitative research approach to explore and analyse the experiences of women police during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kashmir. Both face-to-face and telephonic interviews were conducted with the participants depending on the feasibility of the participants and the researchers to conduct the interviews. Two main themes evolved from our study which include socio-personal problems and work-related problems. Various sub-themes like social ostracism, unavailability of transport facility, familial challenges, risk of contracting the virus and negative impact on the family, negative impact on personal health, erratic work schedules and excessive workload emerged from the two main themes.