An insurance underwriter who was made redundant following her maternity leave has been awarded more than £1.2m in compensation for sex discrimination.
Ms Sommer, a junior underwriter at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions Services in London, complained that her boss made lewd comments about her breasts and once screamed at her to “shut up” during a meeting.
After she informed the company she was pregnant, emails to the company’s HR department asked whether it could explore the “boundaries” of corporate policy as the sender was “not really satisfied” with her performance.
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After returning from maternity leave she was informed she was at risk of redundancy, and she left the business in 2021 after challenging the redundancy process.
In 2022 the Central London Employment Tribunal found the use of redundancy was “retrofitted onto a pre-existing decision to exit the claimant”, and stemmed from her manager’s opinion that her conduct warranted dismissal, which the tribunal concluded was an act of direct sex discrimination.
The “verbal attack” on the claimant during a meeting, and some of the comments made by her manager – including asking her to be more “submissive” – were also considered direct sex discrimination.
The judgment said: “We regarded some of the language as intrinsically sexist: a male would not be talked of in a negative way as having a dominant personality, or show vulnerability, or be submissive. The language was based on how he felt the claimant should behave as a junior female underwriter, he would not had a similar view of a male underwriter.”
This month the employment tribunal awarded Sommer £1,287,014 in compensation, comprising awards for injury to feelings, unfair dismissal, loss of earnings, aggravated damages, breaching the Acas code of conduct, and interest.
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