Barcelona City Council has launched a recruitment process for 282 new City Police officers, attracting a total of 7,138 applicants. Of these, 2,252 are women, accounting for 32% of the total. This is the highest percentage of women candidates in the history of Barcelona’s local police corps.

This is the first time that the quota of 40% of women officers has been introduced into the recruitment process. The goal is to redress the strong imbalance which currently exists, as women account for just 14.21% of the force while men make up 85.79%.

Barcelona City Council was the first administration to introduce a quota of places for women into the recruitment process for the City Police. The change followed the amendment to the Act on Local Police, a move heavily backed by the council with the goal of introducing the gender quota and at the same time safeguarding the principles of equality, merit and capacity in access to public employment. This is an efficient tool for balancing gender representation on the force, which is heavily weighted in favour of male officers at present.

The modification includes an additional prevision specifying that all new recruitment processes conducted after 1 January 2020 “must determine the number of places to be covered by women”, a percentage which must be between 25% and 40% of the total number of places. Barcelona City Council opted for the maximum quota permitted by law (40%), in a clear move towards balancing out gender representation in the City Police.

The last few recruitment processes have seen a notable increase in the number of places gained by women, which can also be explained by the strong increase in the number of women candidates. Recent communication campaigns by the City Council have actually aimed to promote City Police careers among women in the city and the metropolitan area, in a traditionally male-dominated sector.