In the case of Ms H Sommer V Swiss Re Corporate Solutions Services Limited the Central London Employment Tribunal has awarded £1.3 million to Julia Sommer, the underwriter who was unfairly dismissed by a Swiss Re unit in 2021.
Julia Sommer was left speechless after global department chief Robert Llewellyn smirked at her in front of her colleagues and made the derogatory remarks, before adding ‘I bet you like to be on top in bed’.
Ms Sommer – who was working as a junior underwriter at insurance giant Swiss Re – said the executive made the remarks after she’d joked about trying to persuade her boyfriend to marry her.
An employment tribunal heard that Mr Llewellyn then told the group that Ms Sommer was interested in pursuing an ‘open relationship’.
As time went on Ms Sommer and Mr Llewellyn had an increasingly difficult relationship, the hearing was told, with him criticising her for her ‘dominant’ personality and screaming at her to ‘shut up’ in a meeting.
And after she fell pregnant and went on maternity leave he plotted to have her forced out on the pretence that she was being made redundant.
The tribunal heard that Ms Sommer was the victim of sexist conduct from Mr Llewellyn from early on in her career including an incident on 13 December 2017 at work drinks.
‘She says that when chatting in a group… she joked about relocating to London to demand that her then boyfriend now husband marry her after a long-distance relationship,’ the hearing was told.
‘Mr Llewellyn then joked at my expense, ‘If I had breasts like yours I would be demanding too’,’ she said.
Of the way Mr Llewellyn spoke to her, the tribunal 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 (she) should behave as a junior female underwriter, he would not had a similar view of a male underwriter. And the reason why Mr Llewellyn felt able to talk in this way to the claimant was because she is a woman.’
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