Christian influencer sacked by all-girl Catholic college after posting ‘Andrew Tate-style’ video telling girls to make their husband the ‘king of your life’ loses tribunal

A woman who lost her job at a Catholic girls’ school after teachers branded her views on marriage ‘provocative like Andrew Tate’ has lost a claim for wrongful dismissal.

Gozen Soydag, 37, was accused of posting misogynistic content on Instagram, where she has almost 40,000 followers across two accounts.

St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls in Enfield, north London, received complaints from parents and a pupil after the Christian influencer shared a video encouraging women to ‘obey’ their husbands. 

In the footage, a woman in a headscarf says: ‘My husband is my boss’, adding that ‘if he tells me to jump, I’ll jump’ and urging other women to make their husbands ‘king of your life’.

Miss Soydag was asked by the school’s headteacher, Emma Loveland, and assistant headteacher, Jo Sanders, to remove the content or make her accounts private.

She removed the post from her Lady Gozen page, which promotes Christianity and has more than 30,000 followers, but it remained on a second account, Wife in the Waiting, which espouses the virtues of marriage, for three weeks. 

Miss Soydag, who claimed she was being censored over her support for biblical marriage, was dismissed in February 2023. 

She claimed in a witness statement that Sanders told her: ‘If a man were to say what the women had said, it would be misogynistic’, adding that the video was ‘provocative like Andrew Tate’. 

Miss Soydag, who had been in her £250-a-day role as a consultant pastoral manager for year 10 students for only five months, subsequently sued for wrongful dismissal, accusing the school of religious discrimination, religious harassment, and breach of contract.

But she lost her case after an employment tribunal in Watford ruled the video encouraged women to be ‘submissive in marriage’ and condoned ‘abusive and coercive’ relationships. 

Dismissing all Miss Soydag’s claims, Judge Sarah Matthews expressed concern over her insistence that she did not know what misogynism meant.

‘That suggests a concerning lack of awareness, as her role involved the care of 14-year-old girls and her job description included teaching them about healthy relationships,’ said Judge Matthews.

‘[Miss Soydag’s] core role was to provide support, but she was unable or unwilling to understand how the.. post could be perceived as misogynistic or could deter girls from going to her for support.

‘The interference with [her] right of expression was proportionate and justified. The students were at a formative age and were entitled to pastoral support.’

Responding to Miss Soydag’s accusations of religious discrimination, Ms Sanders earlier told the tribunal that the sentiments expressed in the video ran contrary to the school’s ethos.  

‘I felt that this was in direct contrast to what we teach our girls, that they are equal to men, and that they are in control of their future and should be ambitious for it and work towards what they desire,’ she said.

‘I felt there was a risk that promoting female submission to men, purely because of gender, regardless of whether it was in marriage only, risked undermining the teaching we try to instil.

‘We have a diverse mix of pupils and I felt that [Miss Soydag’s] messaging had the potential to make certain students feel devalued and was contrary to our equality policy.’

The tribunal heard that the post ‘spread around the whole school’, with students ‘talking about it in the corridors’. One parent apparently claimed that the video promoted ’18th-century teaching’.

‘My husband is my boss,’ says the woman shown in the controversial post. ‘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, and I do everything he says, and I do that because I chose this man, I put him in this position in my life, and this is how I honour and take care of and love the man in my life.

‘So, I tell women out there, “You want a man in your life, you want to be happy? Figure out what you would do when you are happy.”

‘Because I am happy, my husband does so many great things for me, and I would do that for him. I obey him. I respect him and I let him be the man that he is.

‘I chose a man that I wanted to follow. I chose someone to lead me and that’s why I will do anything for him.

‘If he tells me to jump, I’ll jump. If he tells me to sit down, I’ll sit down. If he tells me to go up on the roof or go up on stage, I will do either or.

‘Anyway, that’s a message for everyone out there. Love and cherish the king in your life.’

Miss Soydag wrote in a caption accompanying 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.

‘You get to choose what you see… What do you see? What are you willing to do or be for your King who loves and cherishes you?’ 

Doubling down on those beliefs at the tribunal, Miss Soydag quoted passages from the Bible and said it was ‘God’s design’ that ‘wives are to submit to their husbands’.

However, it transpired that the Muslim woman shown in the footage was in a polygamous relationship. Miss Soydag said that she would not have posted it had she known.

Judge Matthews said: ‘When viewed objectively the tribunal find the “message”, that women should be submissive in marriage, is expressed in a particularly harsh way.

‘It states women should be prepared when asked by their husband to do the dishes and to jump.

‘It does not refer to mutual submission. The woman is saying, “I will do anything for my husband including jump and go up on the roof.”

‘It appears to condone an abusive and coercive relationship.’