Defence & security, explained.
Female law enforcement: visibility is not the same as influence (Pita Simpson/Getty Images)
The patriarchal power that has dominated the region’s law enforcement remains alive and well, albeit in a new guise.
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Pacific women in policing: Seen but still not heardPacific women in policing: Seen but still not heard
Across the Pacific, gender equality in policing has become a badge of reform. Recruitment targets are announced, women’s police networks convene and reconvene, gender policies are adopted, revised and relaunched, and aid donor reports continue to highlight increasing female representation as evidence of institutional progress and modernisation. The inclusion of women in policing is framed as both a democratic imperative and a pathway to greater legitimacy, responsiveness and accountability for law enforcement.
From the outside, the story seems one of steady progress. But in reality, reform has not been embraced; it has merely been absorbed. To mourn the resilience of patriarchy in this system is to recognise this uncomfortable truth.
Inside Pacific police organisations, gender equality is highly visible on paper. Officers can recite the language of reform: gender training, gender desks, gender focal points, gender balancing. Women appear in recruitment posters, at parade graduations, and in carefully staged photographs during aid donor visits. Equality travels upwards through strategic plans and performance indicators. Yet many women quietly repeat the same refrain: visibility is not the same as influence.
Leadership trajectories make this painfully clear. In the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force, former Deputy Commissioner Juanita Matanga, whose career spanned more than three decades, acted as Commissioner on multiple occasions yet was never substantively appointed and departed without formal recognition. In Samoa, Deputy Commissioner Papali’i Monalisa Tiai-Keti, the first woman to hold that role, also served in acting Commissioner positions during a distinguished two-decade career but was not appointed before resigning in 2026. In both cases, women were entrusted with temporary authority but not permanent power, revealing how inclusion stops short of institutional control.
At more junior levels, similar patterns emerge. Female officers describe being encouraged to stand at the front of ceremonies as the public face of reform, while decisions about postings, specialist courses and promotions are negotiated elsewhere. Informal conversations shape careers long before formal panels convene.
Patriarchal power has not been dismantled; it has adapted. New policies and language are absorbed while core hierarchies remain intact.
Policing demands total availability; culture demands relational responsibility.
This resilience is not accidental. It is built into the job itself. Long before gender strategies arrived, Pacific policing was shaped by colonial command structures and militarised ideals of authority. The “ideal officer” is still imagined as endlessly available, physically tough, operationally mobile and unencumbered by care responsibilities. That model was never gender neutral. It was always masculine. Recruitment targets do little to dislodge it and promotion systems continue to reward those who best embody it.
This model is reinforced by the political economy of reform. Pacific policing does not just reform itself; it reforms under aid donor scrutiny. Gender equality frameworks arrive packaged within security sector reform agendas, complete with templates, indicators and reporting timelines. Counting women is straightforward. Shifting institutional power is not, so the former becomes proof of progress while the latter remains largely untouched. Metrics travel upwards and success is narrated externally, but patriarchy is adaptable and tends to recalibrate rather than collapse.
Layered onto this are the social expectations that hinder progress. Women officers are daughters, mothers, church members and kin within tightly woven communities. Policing demands total availability; culture demands relational responsibility. The collision is predictable. Emotional labour is heavy and constant, yet flexibility within law enforcement agencies remains minimal. “Resilience” becomes the institutional solution to structural strain: women are expected to absorb the pressure rather than question its inflexibility.
The resilience of patriarchy in this setting is a result of strategic accommodation. It has learned to speak the language of equality while safeguarding the distribution of authority. It permits visibility without surrendering control. Mourning, in this sense, is not defeatist. It is diagnostic. It recognises that numerical inclusion and policy symbolism cannot, on their own, unsettle institutional power.
If gender equality is to mean more than representation, reform must confront uncomfortable truths. Recruitment, postings and promotion criteria must be scrutinised for how they reproduce informal patriarchal advantage. Transparency matters because opacity sustains patronage.
Aid donor engagement must also reckon with its own incentives. Reporting participation is easier than confronting entrenched authority. Numerical gains are legible; power redistribution is messy. Without a willingness to disturb the deeper architecture of decision-making, reform will continue to produce visibility without voice and participation.
Women are undeniably more visible in the Pacific, but visibility can coexist very comfortably with inequity. The real question is not how many women are present, but who decides how they are heard.
Gender equity will not be realised when numbers reach a target. It will be realised when masculinity is no longer the unspoken standard against which competence, toughness and leadership are measured. Until reform disrupts the informal rules and loyalties that quietly organise authority, patriarchy will remain resilient, not because reform failed to arrive, but because it has not yet been willing to relinquish the power on which policing rests.
About the author
Danielle Watson
Danielle Watson is an Associate Professor and Research Training Coordinator in the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology.
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