MoD: Female RAF senior officer told to "grow a pair" by male colleagues and subject to sexism gets pay-out

Squadron Leader Anne Rubery has served in the RAF for more than 30 years and in 2018 she lodged a complaint about bullying and discrimination. The details were revealed after she attempted to bring an an employment tribunal case against the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found fell beyond its jurisdiction.

The EAT judgment, published on Monday, repeated Ms Rubery’s initial complaint, which said she had been mistreated, undermined, unsupported and mismanaged in the workplace by her chain of command. It alleged the RAF officers did so “by excluding me from the opportunity to develop professionally by not supporting or informing me of any issues and offering a way forward in time to rectify this.

“By failing to take on any management of welfare despite going through IVF treatment and a permanent medical board. By informing me during an OJAR (officers’ joint appraisal report) debrief I was good enough to be an ‘Admin’ Wg Cdr (wing commander), but not a more ‘Broad’ Wg Cdr. By sending an email which contained a derogatory depiction towards a female.”

She alleged that a wing commander, named only as Bradley, used discriminatory and sexist language. Members of her line management were named as Group Captain Flynn, Wing Commander Bedford and Wing Commander Middleton, in the judgment by Mrs Justice Stacey. In response to her complaint, Mr Bradley and Wing Commander Ward said Ms Rubery was “ballsy” and should “grow a pair”, it said.

Their comments were added to the initial complaint as further instances of sex discrimination and being wronged. However, all her allegations of sex discrimination, harassment, dishonest and biased behaviour were dismissed by letter on October 30 2020. It was found that her colleagues had treated her with compassion and care when she underwent IVF, and that the terms “ballsy” and “grow a pair” were used in reference to both genders and did not meet the threshold for bullying.

In December 2020, Ms Rubery appealed the findings but it was dismissed on all grounds other than that there was an “inordinate delay” in proceedings that amounted to maladministration. She then lodged a complaint to the armed forces ombudsman in June 2021. The Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces (SCOAF) criticised the appeal body for failing to recognised that a “supposedly humorous email” titled the “Texas Chilli Cook Off” was “wholly inappropriate … objectifies the female and is especially offensive to women”.

The judgment said it was “presumably the email complained of as a ‘derogatory depiction towards a female’ in the original service complaint”. In December 2021, the SCOAF found an “overly masculine culture in the unit which appeared to show disregard for the female workforce”, according to the High Court judgment.

The ombudsman said: “I do not consider the spirit of the RAF’s ethos, core values and standards has been adhered to when the AB (appeal body) decided that the phrases or use of language were not considered to be objectively offensive, sexist or gender-related. “The fact that no one (else) was apparently offended by or challenged the use of this language is no excuse for its use,” she added. The SCOAF recommended a “moderate consolatory payment” of £1,000 to £2,000 and an apology.

According to the High Court judgement, the SCOAF “considered that there were wider lessons to be learnt from the findings in their report and the RAF must reconsider how personnel are currently refreshed on their inclusion and diversity, equal opportunities and core values training”.