d role although only a third of policemen thought this appropriate. Wilkie and Currie (1987) presented data from a study of Scottish police in which now 77 percent of women wanted to be integrated whilst 39 percent of men thought there should be gender integration. In part, women's initial relunctance to take on an integrated role had to do with a belief that they would lose the status and expertise attached to their work within a Women's Department (Cameron, 1992: Burman and Lloyd 1993). In the European Union, countries are subject to directives on equal pay and equal treatment. Gregory (1987) considers that appeals to European law have not been successful in improving women's position in the workforce in the various countries of the Union. This may have been so in the early years, for example the Minister of Defence in Belgium used European law to exclude women from the Gendarmerie (Rijkswacht) because it was believed that the work "posed too much physical and moral risks for women" (Hazenberg and Ormiston 1995: 19). However, the Republic of Ireland police, Garda Siochana, was obliged to lift its exemption from the Employment Equality Act in 1985 because of European Directive SI331. Recourse to litigation is limited within countries of the European Union although there has been some successful utilisation of the European Court as in the case of Johnston versus the Royal Ulster Constabulary ( RUC) . Mrs Johnston, a part time reservist in the RUC, successfully claimed that she had been discriminated against when her contract was not renewed because she was unable to use a firearm. It was force policy not to arm women. The chief constable's defence was that if women were armed it would increase the risk of their becoming targets for assassination, that armed women would be less effective in areas for which women are better suited such as welfare work, dealing with families and children, and that if women were to carry firearms it would b...
