Poland: Policing Women, Policing Minorities

Abstract: The departure point for this essay is the massive 2020 pro-choice protests following a ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that restricted access to abortion. The essay analyzes police violence during these demonstrations, which was mostly directed at young, urban, middle-class women, and draws attention to changing Polish attitudes toward the police and their brutality vis-à-vis notions of class, gender, race, and ethnicity. In the preceding 30 years, there had been many cases of police brutality in Poland, mostly targeting minorities, migrants, and working-class men, but these had been ignored by the Polish public. Only after police violence was directed toward young, urban, middle-class women did the Polish public finally start to take notice.