At Last! UK Military Finally in the Top 50 ‘Employers for Women’ List
Culture changing for the better
When I look back at my time in the Royal Air Force [1975 – 1986] I recall being stationed at RAF Wittering. Not only was Wittering the ‘Home of the Harrier’ with No 1 Squadron but it was also the home of 15 Squadron RAF Regiment.
I have to be honest and say that had you asked me back in 1975 whether women would ever serve with the RAF Regiment, or the other elite forces of the Royal Marines or the Parachute Regiment, I would have laughed and said no. This is not me being sexist back in 1975, or meant to be disrespectful, but the culture of the military top-brass was that such a prospect was not on their radar.
How refreshing then to see in the news this week that the British Army and the Royal Navy have been named in the ‘Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2020’ list. Last year, all roles within the service were opened up to women and a new flexible service was also introduced, offering more support to mothers and carers, as well as part-time working options.
It is worth mentioning the fact that the British Army welcomed its first female paratrooper in Captain Rosie Wild aged 28 years. She passed the P Company Course [AAPPS] which, as is well-known, so many men fail to complete. She has been posted to the 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, which is attached to 16 Air Assault Brigade, the Army's rapid reaction force. Her achievement cannot be overstated because the P Company Course involves all of the following:
- Marching 10 miles (16km) while carrying a 16kg backpack, in under 1 hour and 50 minutes
- Completing an aerial assault course designed to test a candidate's ability to overcome fear
- Carrying a 60kg telegraph pole as a team of eight soldiers over 1.9miles (3.1km)
- Running two miles (3.2km) with a backpack and rifle, within 18 minutes
- Completing a 2.2-mile steeplechase - a cross-country run followed by an assault course
- "Milling" - a boxing contest in which soldiers have points deducted for dodging or blocking punches
- Marching 20 miles (32km) with a backpack and rifle, within four hours and 10 minutes
- Carrying a 79kg stretcher for more than four miles (8km) as part of a team of 16 soldiers
Top 50 Employers for Women
The Royal Air Force was not included in this list of the Top 50 Employers for Women 2020’s list but they have also recently broken another milestone of their own. LAC Georgia Sandover completed the 20-week course to become a member of the RAF Regiment. It has taken 45 years of slow progress to have reached this point and we at Military Injury congratulate these outstanding achievements.
There has long been a heated discussion on the role of women in the frontline of the UK military and whether they can ‘cut it’ in the heat of battle. I think that any concerns were removed when Kate Nesbitt, a Royal Navy medic standing at just 5’ tall, became the first woman in the Royal Navy to have been awarded the Military Cross after helping to treat a wounded soldier in Afghanistan. This wasn’t in a hospital either; she ran 70 yards across open ground under heavy machine gun fire from the Taliban to treat Lance Corporal John List who was seriously wounded.
Military Injury
At Military Injury we are assisting hundreds of UK military personnel including a rising number of female staff from all of the Armed Services. They are doing the same training, the same job, in the same circumstances as the male colleagues – and sadly they are suffering the same kind of injuries.
The changes in the UK military fitness standards should help reduce injuries during training and the Physical Employment Standards (PES) ensure that Army personnel have the physical ability to carry out their various roles. The PES are objective, role-related, age and gender-free physical fitness standards, but I believe that we will still see the same muscular skeletal injuries coming through.
It is for this reason that UK military personnel should know that they can access the Armed Forces compensation Scheme [AFCS] if they suffer an injury, illness, or a condition that was caused by their service in order to claim some much deserved compensation.
Some people see this scheme as yet another notch on the ‘claims culture’ and firms like ours using the same tactics as these High Street law firms. This is absolutely not the case and here’s why.
The whole concept is completely different from the often regarded ‘slimy ambulance-chasing law firms’ cashing in on injured servicemen and women. At Military Injury we are not a law firm. We are a group of people, some are ex-services and some are legally trained, but we are a Claims Management Company who has gone through the most rigorous application with the Financial Conduct Authority to offer a service to exclusively help British Servicemen and women who want to claim through the AFCS and War Pension Scheme [WPS].
A claims management company
Unlike a High Street law firm, we do not have endless television adverts of people walking down the street suffering all sorts of bizarre injuries. The vast majority of our clients come to us from personal referrals or because they find our website – and an increasing number of them are female.
We tell our clients from the outset that they can pursue these AFCS claims on their own with no help, although we honestly believe that this is to their disadvantage. The AFCS application form is far from easy to complete and the Regulations that underpin the scheme are complex and full of hazards that will see an application declined on a technicality.
We do offer a risk-free process such that if we take on an AFCS or WPS application we do 95% of the work on behalf of our clients with the guarantee that if the application is not successful then we make absolutely no charge. If the application is successful then we charge 20% of the award plus VAT [over which we have no control – it’s a Government Tax].
We know that people in the military are busy and, although many are more than capable of completing an AFCS application, that is only a small part of the challenge to secure an award. For those who would criticise firms like Military Injury for the service we provide remember also that people have freedom of choice.
The important message here is that making a claim for an injury caused by service is your right and the government introduced the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme because they want you to use it in preference to a civil claim through the courts. We would therefore encourage anyone in the UK military to seek advice if they have been injured, because knowing whether you can claim will provide you with options on which path to take.