Protecting Those Who Protect Us: Women in the Armed Forces from Recruitment to Civilian Life

Summary: The inquiry is one of the most important in the Committee’s history, with the Sub-Committee receiving an almost unprecedented level of engagement. Around one in ten female personnel currently serving in the Regulars contributed to the inquiry. It is also the first of its kind, with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) lifting the usual restrictions that prevent service personnel from contributing to inquiries. The report finds that the MoD and Services are failing to protect female personnel and to help servicewomen achieve their full potential. Whilst most servicewomen and female veterans we consulted (nearly 90 percent of respondents to our survey) would recommend the Armed Forces as a career, more than 3,000 (around 84 percent) reported that female service personnel face additional challenges relative to their male counterparts. In the Committee’s survey, 64 percent of female veterans and 58 percent of currently-serving women reported experiencing bullying, harrassment, and discrimination (BHD) during their careers. The MoD’s representative statistics show that BHD and sexual harassment are gendered. The inquiry heard truly shocking evidence of the bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape experienced by servicewomen. At the same time, the majority of our survey respondents do not believe the military does enough to address BHD, even if things are better than they once were. The Committee discovered a lack of faith in the Complaints system. Our survey found that six in ten women did not report the BHD they experienced. Of those who did complain, one third rated the experience “extremely poor”. The Committee recommends that the MoD create a specialised Defence Authority to handle BHD complaints and that the MoD better resource the Service Complaints Ombudsman and make their decisions binding. It urges the MoD to reverse the recent decision to reduce the appeals period from six weeks to two. The report also finds serious problems with the military’s handling of sexual assault and harassment, which sometimes exacerbates trauma for victims. The Committee urges the MoD to remove cases of rape and sexual assault from military courts and the Service Justice System, and instead hand these over to the civilian court system. The chain of command should also be removed entirely from complaints of a sexual nature.