Police chief reveals sexism at the Met as men feel ‘baffled’ by female bosses

♦ Cressida Dick has revealed she has encountered sexism since being named as the first female head of Scotland Yard.

The 57-year-old, who in 2017 became the first female commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in the force’s 189-year history, said men sometimes struggled with the idea of having a female boss.

Ms Dick said she still met people who seemed “threatened, baffled and confused” by her position.

In an interview at the launch of a leadership academy, she said: “I long for the day when we don’t have these kinds of funny constraints in our heads that make us feel, ‘Ooh, there’s a different power relationship because that’s a man and that’s a woman’. We still get that. It’s not helpful.”

The commissioner described the Met as a “very male-oriented environment”, but added that there are now women “at every level in every part of policing”.

Ms Dick also recalled attending a talk by the second female director of MI5, Eliza Manningham-buller.

She told of her surprise when colleagues talked about her “as if she was a governess or a dominatrix”.

Since her appointment in April 2017, Ms Dick’s Met officers have had to face several terrorist attacks, a rise in violent crime and even the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal.