Major General Sharon Nesmith
Major General Sharon Nesmith
Sharon Nesmith is the only female Major General in the British army and the second woman to hold that rank.* She is also the first woman to command an Operational Brigade and to be on the Army's Executive Board. Her success may not have been something that she imagined for herself at the start of her career in 1992 standing at the back of the parade ground at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst holding a cane whilst her male colleagues did their rifle drill!
She joined the army in 1992 because she “was attracted to the spirit of adventure, the strong team ethos, the leadership. And a career in the army offered a variety of roles and locations too,” she explains, adding that “my brother was thinking of joining the army at the time, so that sowed the seed initially. My parents were also an extremely positive influence on my thinking about what I was going to do to. They came at it from an angle ‘you can do anything you like, and absolutely none of it is about gender’.”
Although she comments that “young women now would just not recognise the Army I joined at all” and, “they’d probably find it quite abhorrent in some respects,” nevertheless “many of the attractions remain the same. Everything I said that attracted me to the Army in the first place has absolutely lived up to my expectations and more. You don’t know this before you join, but the sense of purpose, the strong moral compass and how we see that reflected in our values and standards is absolutely part of why I guess I’m still serving today!”
““If there’s something I could say to my younger self now, it would definitely be to be confident and comfortable in your own skin, keep it all in perspective and enjoy the moment””
Sharon is particularly proud that the army is “now demonstrably more inclusive, and that significantly more opportunities are available to everyone, but especially for women. Those things, and the policies that underpin them, mean that our behaviours and culture are just in a different place than they were 27 years ago.”
When she took command of her first troop in the 28th Signal Regiment, which was preparing to go into operations, she was told that she wouldn’t be able to deploy “because at that time there were no women on the front line. I felt that was wrong and spoke up and so did deploy. But that was the mindset [that existed]when I walked into my first year of regimental duty.”
And there are other examples too. She was asked to sign a piece of paper “that said if I was choosing to have a family that would be the end of my career. And that didn't seem unusual at the time!” But, she notes, that injunction didn't last long “because I'm now a married mum of two!” Her husband is a tree surgeon and she has two sons. In an earlier British Army interview she remarks that “being a mum is a challenge in itself. Being a mum and being in a senior appointment is double the trouble! And there are some days when I think I'm not quite managing to hold it together and there are other days when I look at the boys and think I'm setting a good role model to them.” But, she says with a rueful smile that although she has “an extremely supportive family” and has had support from her colleagues throughout her career, “I wouldn't say for a minute that it's easy.”
Looking back over her earlier career there were undoubtedly periods “where I tried to fit in more; I tried to be more like everybody around me,” but she remarks that she now recognises that the strength she had was precisely “not looking like all those people around me. But it takes a level of personal and professional maturity to feel comfortable with that.”
She says that “if there’s something I could say to my younger self now, it would definitely be to be confident and comfortable in your own skin, keep it all in perspective and enjoy the moment.”
After being the first woman to command an operational brigade, something she describes as “a real honour to plan and lead the soldiers and officers under my command” within an operational environment that was “very technically able, very contemporary and technology-driven”, she is now the Army's first female Personnel Director and as such has a seat on the Executive Board.
In this job she is looking at policies that act as barriers to women who want to serve including “de-linking some of our career progression from key moments in our lifecycle because actually you might not want to have to attend a residential, career-advancing course just at the time when you’re thinking of starting a family.”
“I spent most of my career avoiding being a role model and I was so wrong,” Sharon says in another interview. “I under-appreciated how important it was to see somebody who looks a bit like you, who acts a bit like you, who thinks a bit like you, doing something that you want to go and do. And I now realise that I should have embraced it much more.”
I did not interview Sharon for this portrait but Women in Defence UK did in September 2019 and they kindly gave me permission to reproduce (in edited form) their interview, which you can find here.
*The first, Major General Susan Ridge, retired on 18 October 2019.
