Why are police officers who happen to be women still specified as “Women Police Constables” or sergeants? Look at this:
The specific designation “WPC” was originally appended because when women were first allowed to join the police, they weren’t allowed to do all the men could.
Maybe the best story about this is how female officers were known in Sweden when they first joined in 1908. They were called “Polissyster” (police sister) and recruited to do work that required a softer touch like policing children say. Egalitarian Sweden ruled that women could do all jobs men could in 1923, except women couldn’t be priests in the official church or fully-fledged police officers. Eventually ‘police sisters’ as a term was dropped out of parlance in 1953.
“WPC”s were specifically labelled as such in the UK until 1998. It took long to drop the reference but eventually it went the way of the chastity belt.
There will be administrative excuses not to make the change here. Maybe something about the numbering of officers. It would have to be administrative. Because if women are excluded from certain duties only men are allowed to do, then the problem is in more than the name.
We have gender neutral toilets these days. But if you break the law in one of them you will either have to face a WPC or a PC. Odd.