Australian Federal Police only recruiting women to ranks

Men wishing to join the Australian Federal Police need not apply – for the next few months at least.

The AFP’s Acting Commissioner Leanne Close is hoping 1,000 women apply to become federal police officers during the next recruitment round.

But she argued the exclusion of men, as part of the force’s first-ever women’s-only recruitment round, was not sexist with women making up just 22 per cent of sworn AFP officers.

The AFP is hoping to have a frontline made up of 35 per cent women in the next four years (pictured in a women wearing the uniform)

‘What we are not doing is recruiting enough women to reach the targets that we want by 2021 … so we are actively marketing out there to really target those women who would be keen for a great, challenging and really diverse career,’ she told a graduation ceremony attended by the ABC.

The AFP wants female representation to jump to 35 per cent by 2021 and is working to employ 600 more women during the next four years.

The women’s-only recruitment round, from now until Christmas, will relate to entry-level positions.

The AFP told the ABC women made up just one-third of its staff and a quarter of senior leaders.  

AFP Acting Commissioner Leanne Close hopes to supercharge the proportion of women

The gender-biased recruitment policy was announced on Thursday the AFP’s latest graduation round, of which more than half were women.

Australia has only had one female police commissioner, with Christine Nixon leading Victoria’s police force from 2001 to 2009.

The overweight senior police commander came under fire in 2010 when a royal commission into the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires found out she was having dinner during a disaster that killed 173 people.