Background
WINS designed its Gender Champions Programme in 2018 to promote a diverse and inclusive nuclear security workforce and support the full participation of women in the sector. The programme is supported by the Government of Canada and the Government of the Kingdom of Norway.
WINS is an International Gender Champion and a Gender Champion for Women in Nuclear Policy. WINS is in active partnership with Women in Nuclear, Global as well as the Group of Friends for Women in Nuclear, a group of Vienna-based Ambassadors who advocate for greater representation of women in nuclear.
WINS wishes to encourage women to consider a career in areas of nuclear security where they are not necessarily well represented including law enforcement, guarding and response force roles in the context of the civil nuclear sector.
The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) is an armed national infrastructure police force, responsible for protecting civil nuclear sites and nuclear material when in transit, both in the United Kingdom and internationally. Counter terrorism is at the heart of their policing.
CNC employ over 1,500 police officers and members of staff at nuclear sites throughout the UK. CNC police officers are Authorised Firearms Officers and undergo regular and world class firearms training.
The ambition of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary is “to be recognised nationally and internationally as the United Kingdom’s leading organisation for the provision of armed policing protective services”. The CNC play a key role in the Strategic Armed Policing Reserve and have been deployed across the country as part of Operation Temperer in response to terrorist attacks.
The CNC played a key role in organising and taking part in the inaugural Women in Armed Policing Conference held in the UK in 2019. The conference was opened and closed by CNC Ch Supt Duncan Worsell and Chief Constable Simon Chesterman also gave a speech about the importance of diversity and the barriers to change – stressing that the UK CNC needs to create the right environment and address the perception issues to encourage more women to become AFOs.
At present, the CNCs workforce is made up of 29% women – with 58% of all police staff and 15% of officers being female. Although CNC numbers of 15% female AFOs is above the national average for armed officers, CNC recognises that it has work to do in this area to attract more women to apply and CNC has a number of plans in place to address this.
Objectives
The purpose of the webinar was to discuss the importance of a diverse and inclusive sector for the armed policing services and the importance of the role of women in armed policing.
The webinar was facilitated by Rhonda Evans, Lead for the WINS Gender Champions Programme. Our special guests for the webinar are: Simon Chesterman, Chief Constable of CNC and National Police Chiefs' Council lead expert on armed policing; Chief Superintendent Duncan Worsell, MBE who will reflect on the first Women in Armed Policing Conference held in the UK in 2019; Louise Harrison, Assistant Chief Constable, CNC, an advocate for women and visible minorities in policing, and the highest-ranking female police officer within UK CNC and Donna Jones, Superintendent, CNC, an advocate for women and LGBT people in policing, and an active member of Women in Nuclear UK (WiN) and Authorised Firearms Officer PC Kellan Denny.
Reference materials
The Special Report on Gender and Nuclear Security
WINS gender webpages
Date: Friday, 9 October 2020, 17:00-18:00 CEST ( 16:00-17:00 BST)
Duration: 60 minutes
Language: English
The webinar recording is available here or directly on Livestorm.
If you have any questions please contact: Mehri.Avlyakulova@wins.org
