New report calls out misogyny and bullying in Britain’s Royal Navy

A recent report on misogyny in the British Royal Navy confirmed “misogyny, bullying and other unacceptable behavior.” It summarizes a six-year investigation, prompted by whistleblower Sophie Brook, which found evidence of unacceptable behavior towards female colleagues in the Submarine Service, including sexual harassment and assault. While the Navy claims this behavior is “not ubiquitous,” the allegations point to the need for system-wide reforms, reflecting the challenges facing militaries around the world as they grapple with growing demands for gender balance.

Currently, only seven of NATO’s 30 countries have female defense ministers, and only one of NATO’s uniformed military chiefs of staff is female. These statistics highlight the ongoing struggle to achieve gender balance, especially at the highest levels of military leadership.

It’s not enough to simply get a few women into male-dominated spaces. Real progress in the military, as in more corporate contexts, requires a shift from “Fix-the-Women” strategies, which place the burden of adaptation solely on women, to approaches that fix the system itself.

This need for systemic and cultural change is evident in the Royal Navy’s report. Brook criticized the research for revealing “systemic failures” that left women “isolated, silenced and often retaliated against for daring to speak out.”

Why gender balance in the Navy?

The Royal Navy’s response includes appointing a new head of culture and changes to training. They may want to consider three steps that have proven successful in other countries and militaries – starting with leadership.

• Don’t make it a women’s problem: Begin with a compelling argument for why the Navy needs more gender balance and how this will benefit and fuel the Navy’s mission. Make it an issue of performance and security improvement, and not a moral or equality argument.
• Let leaders lead: Ensure that top leaders are convinced and persuasive about this vision – and are skilled at communicating it. The tone from the top (or lack thereof) makes or breaks any attempt at balance. They have to ‘sell’ it to other, more skeptical men. If they can’t, women will never be welcome. And bad behavior will continue to result from their unbelief.
• Stop correcting women by creating ‘blocks of honour’: It is often assumed that women will only be accepted if they conform to existing male-dominated models, often limiting participation to a small number of rare ‘alpha women’. Let the system and culture adapt and integrate with women’s differences – and recognize their benefits.

The British Navy’s experience underlines the need for a fundamental change in the way militaries approach gender balance. It is not enough to simply integrate women into existing structures; creating an inclusive And An effective military requires adapting the system for all, ensuring that women are not just “honorary men” but full partners in defending the security of nations.

The Deep Sea Misogyny Challenge

Achieving that status is no small task in this context. Consider the reality of British submarines:

• It’s still newThe push to get women into British submarines only started about a decade ago, although women first sailed in surface ships more than 30 years ago.
• There are still few women: The percentage of women serving in submarines is kept confidential for security reasons, but is estimated to be significantly lower than the 10.4% female representation in the regular Royal Navy.
• Submarines are strange spaces: Submarines are a workplace and temporary shelter for 100 to 130 people like no other on earth (sizes vary). Literal. Working in a submarine means living underwater in a steel tube for months, without breaks. Tight living spaces, minimal personal space and awkward physical layouts are the norm. Temporary bunk beds are sometimes made from torpedo planks, long distances from home, including extended periods without communication with loved ones, are common, and there is no daylight or fresh food at all after the first few days. For months.

All this means that, as a former submarine commander explained in a recent conversation, spending days, weeks and months beneath the oceans can make it difficult to maintain a rational perspective on ordinary and decent human interactions. Tensions can arise at any time and on any scale. From someone else eating the last piece of bacon at the breakfast bar, to a conflicting opinion among the command team on a mission-critical technical decision.

Develop ‘gender bilingual’ leadership skills

In such a world, the leadership skills required to lead everyone in the right direction are vast and complex. Adding a layer of cross-gender complexities, including hormones, adds to that leadership challenge. But therein lies the problem. In theory, the Royal Navy is very good at teaching, coaching and honing leadership, at all levels.

Anyone above the rank of the most junior sailor receives leadership training throughout their career, in addition to core trade or professional qualifications. The leadership piece is treated as a core skill set. Actively embedding gender-balanced leadership skills and tools should require marginal additional time and effort.

Once leaders at all levels are convinced of the critical importance of good gender-balanced leadership, they should be able to operate on a consciously safe basis. Then a little pressure on the accelerator when a ‘boys-will-be-boys’ moment starts to arise should be enough. No matter how far the scale and perspectives have shifted during an underwater patrol.

Many people, even those in or near other parts of the defense, may not think about this very often. The most common response, informal from several conversations, to this latest Royal Navy misogyny report was: “I’m not surprised.” These responses and the culture they create sound like something the UK ‘senior service’ needs to manage more proactively – for its operational capacity, recruitment, retention – and its reputation.

Gender balance begins and ends with leadership. Balancing the genders in any organization is a careful alignment of both representation and culture. If the culture stinks, you can forget about representation. The biggest part of the puzzle, defining a compelling “why” of gender balance for the Navy and its submarine crews, should be the easiest part in this case. When leaders “buy” the why, the beliefs and role models start to flow. This in turn will quickly unlock the ‘how’ to start doing things and create the change that is needed.

The Royal Navy has boldly set goals where few women have gone before. Now it’s up to leaders to convince their colleagues why that was a good idea — and rid the culture of misogyny so they can keep it there.