Military faces #MeToo moment as thousands of female personnel detail abuse

Female members of the 904 Expeditionary Air Wing in Kandahar, Afghanistan

(Image credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

published 4 March 2021

MPs investigating alleged abuses of power in the UK’s armed forces have been hit with a barrage of evidence from female personnel and veterans.

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Around 40% of the testimonies, submitted via an anonymous survey, are from serving members of the military. The inquiry is being led by Army veteran Sarah Atherton, “who is the only sitting female MP with a regular military background”, the paper adds.

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As the inquiry prepared to hear the first oral evidence today, Atheron said that the “weight of evidence” was “compelling” and included numerous complaints of “endemic low-grade sexism”.

Serving members of the Armed Forces were allowed to submit evidence after Defence Secretary Ben Wallace lifted a gagging order last year.

Wallace said this week that he was “grateful to all our servicewomen who shared their stories”, which are “providing valuable insights for this review”.

The inquiry - formally known as Women in the Armed Forces: from Recruitment to Civilian Life - has also received written submissions from charities and other organisations.

Lieutenant Colonel Diane Allen, who resigned in February 2020, will be the first to give spoken evidence. Allen hit the spotlight last May when she “revealed she was part of a private outpouring of grievances aired by female officers in a closed online forum” following the abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, as Sky News reported at the time.

She told the broadcaster that she “would certainly love for the army to have its #MeToo moment and just acknowledge what happened and move on”.

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Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs.

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a masterâ€™s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.