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SHIRLEY BECKE, who has died aged 94, was the first woman commander in the Metropolitan Police (the equivalent of assistant chief constable), having already carved out a career in what was traditionally a man's world as a gas fitter.
She was not a woman to differentiate between the sexes in the workplace, and believed that women could, and should, function as effectively as men, even in a police force with a "macho" culture. "There is no such thing as a lady policeman," she once ventured. "We are police officers who just happen to be women."
When Shirley Becke first joined the force, in wartime London, the few women officers were largely confined to dealing with women prisoners and children. They were forbidden to marry, were paid less than men, and were not allowed to carry truncheons. Women now occupy senior positions throughout the British police, from anti-terrorist commanders to armed response personnel. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has 77 women members, including four chief constables.
In fact, women had been employed as police officers since the First World War, despite opposition from the Police Federation, which in 1924 insisted: "It is purely a man's job alone". When Shirley Becke became head of the Metropolitan Women's Police 40 years later, the same organisation was still complaining that the service was being flooded with women who lacked the necessary physical strength to do the job.
But Shirley Becke had no truck with such attitudes. In the mid-1960s, by then promoted to the senior echelons of the Met, she launched a campaign to recruit more women officers, pointing out that policing...