EL SALVADOR: MORE WOMEN JOINING POLICE FORCE

(7 Sep 1995) Spanish/Nat

There are seven-thousand officers in El Salvador's national police force - 15-hundred of them are women.

Many of them fought in the civil war and now that the war is over they are using their experience to fight crime.

In a country full of traditional values and machismo it was once unusual for Salvadoran women to join the police. But the situation has changed and now many women in El Salvador are joining the police corps.

There are seven-thousand police officers in El Salvador's National Police- known as the PNC. Fifteen hundred are women.

The young women have been trained to the same standards as their male colleagues.

Some even fought alongside men during the 12-year civil war in El Salvador.

It is estimated that 30 per cent of the PNC female officers are former guerrilla fighters.

They are taught self-defence, restraining techniques and how to handle heavy weaponry.

And they put their skills to work on the streets of San Salvador by cracking down on gang members.

The female officers take part in the same anti-crime operations as their male counterparts.

During this operation a female officer arrested a former member of a military unit. The man had threatened the cameraman, and the female officer took no pains in showing the man that the P-N-C does not take any threats.

These women are as tough as any man, and they're not afraid to take risks.

SOUNDBITE: (In Spanish)

"People sometimes have the impression that women are incapable but we have the same qualifications as men, because we perform the same jobs. In our job there's no preference (towards men) because we're women, our job is the same as that of men, the operations are the same and we handle ourselves as good as men on the street."
SUPER CAPTION: Sandra Reyes Flores, Police woman

After the war many women who fought alongside men were forced to go back to their homes and conform to traditional female roles or take low-paying factory jobs.

But these police women are determined to prove they're as capable as men to perform traditional male jobs - and at the same time putting criminals behind bars.

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