First Indian-born cop breaks barriers to rise to the top
Mandeep Kaur tells Torika Tokalau about her struggle to challenge cultural and gender stereotypes to become one of the highestranked ethnic women in the force.
MANDEEP Kaur was 27 years old when she first realised her identity was not dependent on whose daughter or wife she was, and she was free to create her own success.
Recently separated from her husband and after leaving behind her two children in India because of a messy custody battle, Kaur moved to Australia to start a new life in 1996.
She was applying for a driving licence in Sydney and stared at the form in front of her, confused that there was no box for her to tick that she could relate to.
In India, a person’s official identity followed a standard format: son or daughter of a man.
Kaur, 52, who became New Zealand’s first Indian-born police officer in 2004, and rose to the ranks of senior sergeant this month, says, back then, she didn’t believe being a woman would get her anywhere.
Growing up in the Punjab capital of Chandigarh, Kaur’s identity was attached to that of her father, while being groomed to be a man’s wife.
The eldest of two girls, she says it was no secret her parents had wanted a son – a male in the family was a blessing.
Kaur often heard her mother saying that if she had been a boy, she could have joined either the police or military. But not as a woman.
She took the driver’s licence form back to the woman at the counter and asked if she had been given the wrong documents.
‘‘I asked her, ‘it doesn’t have a daughter or wife of, how can you identify me?’.’’
The woman told her they didn’t want to know whose daughter or wife she was, only who she was.
‘‘That had a huge impact on me, I was shocked,’’ Kaur said.
‘‘It was my first realisation that I was my own person, I could be myself – I didn’t need a male to identify with. I felt so empowered.’’
From that day on, Kaur focused on achieving her own goals, and instead of just being a provider for her family, she realised she could have ambitions. But it wasn’t easy. In Australia, she had cultural barriers to overcome and the mental strain of that was hard.
Kaur said she felt like an outcast in the Punjab community because she didn’t have a man by her side. The treatment was subtle – often she wasn’t invited to family gatherings because of it.
‘‘To them, I was a woman separated from her husband, who left her children behind. That wasn’t how a woman should be or behave. It was subtle, but I knew
. . . those were my loneliest years.’’
Kaur married when she was just 18 and gave birth to her daughter a year later, during her final year of college. She got her degree in political science and sociology that same year but back then, her sole purpose was to be a wife and a mother.
‘‘In my culture, having a boy is a very prestigious thing. I always had a sense of not being a boy growing up. My dad wanted a son and mum also felt little in front of my dad, that she couldn’t give him one.
‘‘Those things were very subtly tailored in my childhood where I felt gender inequality.’’
Kaur said girls were put into school, but the purpose of their study was so they could become better wives and mothers, not so they could go on to have a career.
When her marriage ended after five years in 1992, she moved with her two children back to her parents’ home.
‘‘I had become [a] burden to my parents, not only as a female but a recently separated female. They had married their daughter off, all that dowry, but I was back, and I had two kids in tow.
‘‘I was waiting for my husband to come back to me, he didn’t. So I thought I’d build a better life for my children.’’
At that time, going to Australia was trendy, she said, so she made the move in 1996 to study computing, leaving behind her children – Amardeep, then aged 6, and Parneet, 8.
‘‘I quickly realised that life was so different in Australia, compared to where I came from. Women had equal rights, if not more. We were not isolated or left out because of our gender.’’
For three years, with limited English skills to help her get by, she worked several jobs, including as a door-to-door salesperson and taxi driver.
She moved to New Zealand in 1999 because she heard gaining
residency would be easier across the ditch, and continued working as a taxi driver, kitchen hand, office administrator and a food court attendant.
On her taxi job, she picked up a passenger who was a psychologist and the pair struck up a conversation about happiness and childhood dreams.
Kaur remembered her mother’s dream for her, that she could be a police officer if she was a man, and spoke to John Pegler, a retired police officer who was a
‘I look at my position as a representation of all ethnic women.’ MANDEEP KAUR
night receptionist at the YMCA where she lived at the time.
Pegler told her stories about his days on the beat and when she told him that she wanted to join the police, he got her a career pack application the next day.
Today, after 17 years in the force, Kaur is New Zealand’s first Indian-born female to reach the senior ranks.
She remembers the cultural barriers she had to overcome when she was training to be a cop.
Kaur had to wear shorts for the first time, which was against her religion, when she stepped into a pool for the first time to learn how to swim. She also started to eat meat for the first time to build strength because of the physical toll the training took on her body.
In 2002, she finally got custody of her children and went back to India to collect them to live with her.
‘‘It wasn’t easy, but I worked hard every single day. I didn’t get this far to just give up.
‘‘I went back to India once to visit when I was in Australia and that trip broke my heart because my son cried and asked why I couldn’t take them with me. I vowed I’d never go back until I could bring them with me . . . it took six years.’’
Kaur’s worked as a frontline officer, in road policing, in the family violence team, the Investigation Support Unit, neighbourhood and community policing, intelligence, family harm and Ma¯ ori and Pacific services, in west and south Auckland, and is now based in Wellington.
She says she’s loved working with police to build relationships with minority and ethnic communities, and in the family harm unit, working with women who ‘‘feel more comfortable talking to another female, from their own culture’’.
‘‘I know if I didn’t push myself, I couldn’t achieve anything. It was my own cultural structures and my community, that stereotype, that told me I couldn’t be more than what was expected of me.
‘‘I look at my position as a representation of all ethnic women and the legacy of my family. We are the only ones putting limitations on ourselves.’’