"I do not want my girls to become police officers" : An interview study on how Icelandic female officers are feeling regarding to stress and stress related issues

Abstract: This study aims to describe how female police officers in Iceland manage stress, how they perceive stress both work related and in their private life. Eight Icelandic female police officers were interviewed. All the interviews took place in March 2020 and where conducted by the same researcher. A semi structured questionnaire was filled out during a telephone interview, assessing feelings of stress and the effects of stress both at work and in the private life. In the qualitative study the interviews were analysed using content data analysis. The gender perspective was used to gain deeper understanding of the participant’s feelings regarding their stress levels. Even with only 8 participants it was easy to recognize patterns of shared views and experiences regarding stress between these police officers. Therefore the study is probably large enough to give a good representation of Icelandic female police officers views on stress. According to this it is possible to say that the transferability is great. Doing a larger study of a similar kind would be interesting to obtain an even better understanding of the subject. Almost all of the participants were feeling stressed both at work and at home. Many of them thought that they had to do more than their male co-workers to feel equal to them. Most of them did not think that they would receive any help dealing with stress from their supervisors at work unless they would ask specifically for it themselves. Previous studies have shown that police officers work under very stressful circumstances and often say themselves that they feel stressed. There can be many harmful effects from stress on both health and wellbeing of individuals.