A Christian influencer who lost her job at an all-girls Catholic school for posting a video that was “misogynistic” and telling women to make their husbands the “king of their lives” has lost a claim for wrongful dismissal.
Gozen Soydag, 37, was sacked from her role as pastoral manager for Year 10 students at St Anne's Catholic High School for Girls in Enfield, north London, after she shared a video online encouraging women to “obey” their husbands, sparking complaints from parents.
Ms Soydag has 40,000 followers across her online platforms which she uses to promote Christian ministry and to “empower” women to be wives, The Telegraph reported.
In a video shared by Ms Soydag in 2023, a woman says “my husband is my boss” and “if he tells me to jump, I’ll jump”.
When the issue was brought to the attention of the school’s headteacher, Emma Loveland, and assistant headteacher, Jo Sanders, Ms Soydag was asked to remove the video from her page or make her accounts private.
Ms Sanders said “if a man made the comments it would be misogynistic”.
The influencer removed the video from her Lady Gozen page but it remained on her second page, Wife in the Waiting, for three weeks. She was sacked at the end of February 2023.
After she was sacked, Ms Soydag, sued the school for wrongful dismissal.
But she lost her case after an employment tribunal in Watford ruled the video promoted “the message that women should be submissive in marriage” and condoned “abusive and coercive relationships”.
At the tribunal, Ms Soydag accused the school of religious discrimination, religious harassment and breach of contract.
The video Ms Soydag posted showed a woman in a headscarf saying: “My husband is my boss. My husband is number one. If my husband tells me, ‘hey, sit down’, I’ll sit down.”
“If he tells me ‘you can’t go out with your friends today’, I’m not going to go out with my friends.”
“If he says ‘hey go wash this dish for me’, I’m going to go and wash the dish for him. I chose this man to be the king of my life and yes, I agree with everything he says.”
Ms Soydag captioned the post: “Many will hear this and see the head covering and think that this woman is a slave or maid to her husband. But what I see is a powerful woman who chooses to honour a man that loves her and a man who she is willing to follow the leading of wherever and whatever he asks her.”
Judge Sarah Matthews accused Ms Soydag of having “a concerning lack of awareness” for someone tasked with “the care of 14-year-old girls”.
She dismissed all of Ms Soydag’s claims.
