There was a haunted look on the face of Dr Eva Carneiro as she left an employment tribunal this week following a secret deal which ended her sexual discrimination claim against Chelsea Football Club.
My guess is that although the former team doctor had won a pay-out estimated to be a staggering £5 million, she may have realised that despite her stunning victory, her decision to bring the case may have been a terrible mistake.
Like many women before her who have bravely challenged males bosses over perceived sexism, the long-term effect could be deeply damaging.
There was a haunted look on the face of Dr Eva Carneiro as she left an employment tribunal this week following a secret deal which ended her sexual discrimination claim against Chelsea Football Club
Take two previous high-profile cases, in which successful City women (bankers Svetlana Lokhova and Isabel Sitz) took on their bosses for sexual discrimination. They won huge pay-outs of up to £3.2million but admitted afterwards that they were left feeling debilitated by the experience, with their self-confidence shattered.
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Share 750 sharesDuring the tribunals they would have had to defend themselves against an army of lawyers and the inevitable courtroom attempts at character assassination.
WESTMINSTER NOTICEBOARD
Viewers of BBC1’s Question Time deserve a rebate of their TV licence after having to endure the sight of comedian Eddie Izzard dressed as Widow Twankey, hysterically shouting his pro-EU opinions on Thursday night.
Every time the camera focused on his lipsticked face, fuchsia-coloured beret and nail varnish, I could visualise thousands more people deciding to vote for Brexit.
SamCam turning up at St Paul’s Cathedral yesterday for the national service of thanksgiving for the Queen’s 90th, wearing an inappropriately shoulder-baring blue-and-white striped dress, is the surest sign yet that Dave is heading for an early exit as PM. His wife has already bought her beach holiday wardrobe.
Confronted by a trio of women politicians seemingly auditioning to be witches in Macbeth, Boris Johnson struggled in ITV’s referendum debate. Given his track record with ex-lovers who have called him a cheat and a liar, I’m surprised he wasn’t able to handle them a bit better.
<!- - ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/gb/debate/none/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 - ->AdvertisementDr Carneiro, as we know, lost her job after the then Chelsea manager, Jose Mourinho, called her a ‘daughter of a whore’ for treating a player on the pitch he didn’t think was injured.
The 42-year-old doctor claimed she was simply seeking what was called a ‘whole career loss’ damages, which is probably an accurate description.
By challenging the oafs who control football, she will almost certainly never again get the job she loved in the industry she loved.
Why would a manager hire her if he feared she might be noting down or squirrelling away incriminating comments or emails for possible use in some future discrimination claim?
At the end of the case, Dr Carneiro said: ‘It has been an extremely difficult and distressing time for me and my family.’
Yes, sexist behaviour is unacceptable, but any woman brave enough to confront it needs to know that money won’t necessarily compensate her for the nightmare she will go through.
Revenge, however, justified, has a tendency — like a penalty rebounding off a goalpost — to bounce back and hit you in the face.
The Euro 2016 football tournament hadn’t even kicked off before — on cue — paralytically drunk England fans chanting ‘ISIS, where are you?’ had to be tear-gassed by French police. At a time when there are huge fears about a possible terrorist attack during the championships, this bone-headed behaviour by England supporters must make many French people feel they can’t wait for Britain to leave the EU.
The idiotic Football Association has banned England players from visiting the battlegrounds of the Somme amid concerns the trip might be ‘too draining’.
Diddums! What a shame because these obscenely overpaid, supposedly fit young men could have learned much about the huge sacrifices made by those 19,240 soldiers serving King and country 100 years ago and who fell on the first day of battle.
These Tommies were on about 12s/6d a week — unlike Wayne Rooney’s grotesque £260,000.
Kim's bedtime blues
Sex And The City actress Kim Cattrall has explained the reason she pulled out of a West End play last year was that she was suffering from chronic insomnia.
Doctors prescribed a cure — a pre-bedtime bath and the removal of all clocks and phones from her bedside.
How ironic for a woman whose best-known screen role was as a voracious nymphomaniac and whose bedroom was used for everything apart from sleeping!
Sex And The City actress Kim Cattrall has explained the reason she pulled out of a West End play last year was that she was suffering from chronic insomnia
Paying tribute to his hero Muhammad Ali, British boxer Lennox Lewis said that though they had come from single-parent homes, they were both proof it is possible to achieve great things.
Ali was a brave campaigner against racism; yet I have difficulty accepting that his family life provided a role model for young black boys.
He had four wives, serial mistresses and nine children — with many others now claiming he was their father and ready to demand a slice of his £55 million legacy.
Tragically, 25 per cent of U.S. children are now raised in single-parent families, with that figure rising to 72 per cent among the black community. In Britain, an estimated two million single parents make up a quarter of families with school-age children.
Many of these (the vast majority being women) do a great job, but research shows the most important factor behind a successful, healthy life is to grow up in a stable, two-parent family.
Despite all Ali’s millions of dollars, that priceless stability is something he failed to provide for his children.
I can't be the only one heartily relieved that former Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova has a two-year ban for taking an illegal performance-enhancing substance. I’d personally have spiked the Queen of Grunts’ between-sets drinks if it stopped that hideous, 110 decibel shrieking each time she hit the ball.
I can't be the only one heartily relieved that former Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova has a two-year ban for taking an illegal performance-enhancing substance
Melanie Brown says of her former Spice Girl bandmates: ‘We’re all very determined, strong, independent women. I’m not surprised that individually, personally, spiritually and professionally we’ve all done pretty good.’ Such moronic platitudes would be more convincing if the girls weren’t now bickering over possible reunions and if Scary Spice herself wasn’t reduced to appearing in panto in Birmingham this Christmas.
Queen Hillary's claim that running to be America’s first female president is ‘the greatest victory for women’ is deeply embarrassing given she’s only done so on the stained shirt-tails of husband Bill. Mrs T didn’t become our first and only woman PM because of Denis. It was thanks to her own genius — something shrill Hillary lacks.
This shabby 'victory' harms marriage
A jobless woman has successfully sued her former husband (who she divorced 20 years ago) for a £500,000 share of his fortune, made after they split.
Kathleen Wyatt, who has four children by three different men, won her case in the Supreme Court for so-called ‘financial remedy’. Her ex-husband lambasted the decision as mad and an ‘open season for people who had brief relationships a quarter of a century ago’.
He’s right. The ruling may make young couples think twice about marriage.
Like so many of their generation — and so few of our own — the Queen and Prince Philip prove what love and loyalty can achieve. Perhaps I’m feeling over-emotional as I’m planning my father’s 90th birthday celebrations. But I feel profound admiration for that generation — and gratitude to Dad who’s been Mum’s ‘strength and stay’ during their 68-year marriage.
After calls for Sir Philip Green to lose his knighthood, what of his wife? Swanning around on their £100 million yacht off Monaco, Lady Green, who pocketed £53 million from the sale of Bhs’s HQ, has no shame. The couple are worth £3.5 billion. She should give £571 million to plug the Bhs pension black hole or renounce her title.
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