If BBC 1’s ‘Rookie Cops’ is anything to go by, the female police officers don’t hold back in telling viewers how much their job means to them.

But when it comes to the overall Dyfed-Powys police figures, WPCs are falling thin on the ground.

Recent figures confirm that just two in five police officers recently hired by the Dyfed-Powys force were women. This is lower than across the rest of England and Wales, were 42 per cent of new police recruits were female.

As part of a 2019 election manifesto pledge, the Government promised an uplift of 20,000 new police officers serving by March 2023 and this was to work hand-in-hand with a campaign to improve gender and ethnic diversity in the force.

However data from the Home Office shows that female recruits made up just 41% of the 162 police officers hired by Dyfed-Powys Police between April 2020 – when gender breakdowns of new officers were first recorded nationally – and March of this year.

The ratio of female to male police officers at Dyfed-Powys Police has risen from 33% in March 2019 to 36% this year, but critics argue the uplift has not gone far enough to make police forces representative of their communities.

Jemima Olchawski, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, a charity campaigning for gender equality, said that trust in the police had been "shaken" by a "culture of misogyny" in certain forces.

"These stats represent some welcome progress, but to get to equality we need more women entering the force,”  she said,

“This means recognising that there is a real problem with sexism, and taking some meaningful action to stamp it out."

Meanwhile, separate snapshot data from the Government’s Gender Pay Gap Service shows that across all jobs at Dyfed-Powys Police, women were earning 21% less than their male counterparts as of March 31 2021. These figures represent the latest available figures.

The total number of extra officers who have joined police ranks across England and Wales since November 2019 stands at 13,576. This includes 91 in Dyfed and Powys.