Secret Report Reveals British Army’s Culture of Harassment and Hostility Towards Women

In a virtual corner of Whitehall, buried within the Ministry of Defence’s digital filing system, a cultural audit of the British Army sat, unread by the public.

Written in 2022, by Professor Anthony King, then Chair of War Studies at the University of Warwick, the report, ‘To Fight and Win’, would have stayed in the shadows, until it was brought into the light by researcher Joe Lloyd via a Freedom of Information request.

It’s no surprise it took the force of the law to publish it. Its findings are damning.

The Army, the report notes – perhaps self-evidently – “is currently coded masculine.” But that observation sits at the heart of the 109-page document which combines scholarly analysis with hundreds of hours of interviews across ranks and regiments to offer an unflinching portrait of Britain’s military that, despite years of reform, remains “routinely and recurrently” hostile to women.

The Army’s challenge, King writes, is transforming a culture that believes itself “as necessarily masculine, best performed by men”. Female soldiers, even when competent and committed, are “accidentally marginalised” at best, and victims of “purposeful” discrimination or predation at worst. Where structural barriers and behavioural norms combine to make women feel like “secondary”, “weaker, worse soldiers”.

The report’s frankness is striking. It details “lad culture” among junior ranks where hard drinking and misogyny fuels misconduct. It describes the pernicious use of WhatsApp, often deployed by male soldiers to target or humiliate female colleagues. And it recounts how women, facing harassment or worse, see their complaints minimised, mishandled, or ignored altogether.

As the report notes: “Door-knocking typically occurs at night, often after personnel have been drinking. It is common for male soldiers to knock on a female’s door soliciting her for sex.”  One case involved a soldier knocking for two hours on a woman’s door; as the report notes, “he received no formal punishment; he was not even fined.”

Male soldiers routinely sent photographs of their penises to female colleagues or stalked them on WhatsApp. One female told King: “At 17-years-old, I got dick-pics from people I didn’t know.” The report described how “a senior (officer) had slapped a female soldier’s rear during a mess function”, with no consequence to the offender. 

As the report laid out, “many females who had been subjected to predatory behaviour… or even outright sexual assault reported that the culprits had not been punished or were still in the Army.”

King detailed how, following a military exercise, a “staff sergeant who had assaulted multiple young female soldiers was acquitted at court martial, though he later wrote letters to his victims admitting what he had done.”

King critiqued how the Army’s own values seem inconsistently applied. The report points out that the British Army enforces a rigid zero-tolerance policy on drug use, dismissing soldiers regardless of circumstances, yet often fails to apply the same standard to cases of sexual misconduct.

This disparity has led many female soldiers to believe they are treated as “second-class citizens” within the institution. As one female officer noted: “If a woman is at the back of a run, that is a problem, but a chap at the back is never noticed”. 

As the report notes: “A woman in the Army is statistically four times more likely to be subject of abuse, than a female in the civilian workplace.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence, when approached for comment, said the characterisation in King’s report that drug use is treated more harshly than sexual misconduct is radically different today than it was at the time of the report’s commission. 

“It is incorrect to suggest that sexual misconduct is not subject to a zero-tolerance policy,” they said. “Under the MOD’s 2022 Zero-Tolerance to Sexual Offences policy, any service person convicted of a sexual offence will be discharged from the Armed Forces, in addition to any criminal sanctions such as imprisonment or being placed on the Sex Offenders Register.”

By contrast, they added, there are “certain exceptional circumstances” under which a soldier who fails a Compulsory Drug Test may, in theory, be retained.

The widespread nature of the misconduct described in the report has very real term effects, borne out in part by the MoD’s compensation payments.

As an investigation by openDemocracy, published in May 2025, revealed, the Ministry of Defence has paid nearly £20 million over the past decade to victims of sexual misconduct, abuse and harassment. The payouts – covering compensation and legal costs in 181 cases – were described by former defence minister Sarah Atherton as evidence of “deep-rooted cultural and structural failings”. 

And, like King’s own report, if it were not for the law, much would have gone unheard. Victims told King of being silenced by an opaque complaints process that isolated them from support networks and forbade open discussion, and frequently ended with the victim’s attacker remaining uncensured. 

The audit does not merely diagnose a problem; it proposes solutions. Recommendations, grouped under the banners of “Enhancing Professionalism” and “Advancing Integration,” offer up some ideas for reform.

They range from redefining the Army’s purpose – King suggests the military needs to be “renovated and re-invigorated”, with a greater focus on urban defence within NATO commitments – to improving training, adjusting the promotion system, and instilling zero tolerance for bullying, discrimination, and harassment.

He recommends that sexual assault should lead to automatic dismissal and that inappropriate language – from “chapess” to “wench” – should be actively challenged.  As he noted: “Females in the Army are commonly dismissed as ‘split-arses’; the term refers to female genitalia, of course.” This, he says, must end as it’s the beginning of a rot that corrodes all.

Such reform will be hard to attain. King notes that the very structures of assessment inhibit accountability. Each year, an officer receives an assessment known as the Officers’ Joint Appraisal Report (OJAR), prepared by their seniors. In this process, King notes, “there is little incentive for personnel to tell their commanders the truth, if that reality contradicts the superior’s own views or interests, or if it reflects badly on their units or branches.”

The report also examines more mundane, but equally important, aspects of Army life such as accommodation, leadership, and resourcing. The move to single-room barrack housing, for instance, has brought greater privacy but also more isolation. Some female soldiers reported feeling more vulnerable, cut off from peers and support networks.

Overall, beneath these operational observations lies a sharper critique: that leadership itself is part of the problem. “Senior leadership in the Army is sometimes detached from its personnel,” the report notes. One officer interviewed described senior leadership as “stratospherically detached from the Field Army,” with another dismissing their interventions as mere “virtue-signalling”.

To combat this, King proposes a revival of an old tactic used by Field Marshal Montgomery during the Second World War: the appointment of informal “eyes officers” who report directly to senior leadership on unit morale and command climate. He also recommends longer postings for officers above the rank of major, to encourage continuity and accountability and stop the “short-termism” such brevity engenders.

For all the Army’s storied history, King argues, it must now make a choice. It can continue to pride itself on past glories and operational excellence, while quietly sidelining women and tolerating abusive behaviour. Or it can embrace what he calls “hyper-professionalism”; a culture built on standards, expertise, and inclusion rather than outdated notions of masculinity. But, he argues, Government ambitions to reach 30% of female staff by 2030 would be “very unlikely” to be achieved.

“Of course, many claims in this report are controversial. They may be unwelcome to some – perhaps to many, ” he concludes. But he says his report has to be the “starting point of any debate about what the Army needs to do”. 

Failure to act, it is clear, would leave Britain with a military hobbled by internal dysfunction, and dangerously out of step with the society it purports to defend.

The Ministry of Defence told Byline Times: “Our Armed Forces play a vital role in protecting the nation and a range of measures are in place to maintain a safe, inclusive environment for our l people, particularly for our female personnel.

“This includes taking action to improve the reporting and handling of complaints, the creation of a new complaints reporting app and a widespread programme of work to prevent harassment and discrimination. There is no place for any abuse or unacceptable behaviours within the military and this Government has stepped up efforts to bring about crucial reform and provide a place where people are proud to work and have faith in the service justice system.”

The ministry added that the commissioning of the report, and the decision not to release it, “were taken by the previous Government”.