Number 1 in the Guardian, Times and Complete University Guide 2014. One of the top five universities targeted by Britain’s leading graduate employers. 92 per cent student satisfaction. Yet beneath this glittering façade, lies a deeply entrenched, gender-regressive psyche in Cambridge.

The former are the attributes being extolled in the current student prospectus. The second is an issue which is largely denied across the university, but is one that, if placed alongside these statistics, should alter the globally-renowned image of Cambridge as it currently stands.

Coming to Cambridge wearing rose tinted glasses is an inevitable side effect of being a fresher. Having taken a gap year, I had built up an idealistic image of Cambridge in my mind, glorifying it to such an extent that my daydreams began to slowly crumble as I questioned whether it could ever match my impossibly high expectations. In many respects, it has exceeded them. Yet despite the many positives, there is a sense of discomfort about gender inequality.

I first became aware of this issue during Freshers’ Week, in both the upper echelons of Cambridge and amongst the students themselves. At King’s College, the fact that we currently have a female Senior Tutor, Dr. Perveez Mody, created both pride and discomfort amongst the freshers, especially upon the realisation that this was a rarity in Cambridge. The undertones of patriarchy were becoming apparent.

Cambridge was a university made for men, by men. Even Newnham, founded in 1871, didn’t award degrees to women until 1948. Cambridge only officially became a mixed university in 1972. This legacy of gender inequality persists.

There is a significant gender imbalance in students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. For applicants in 2012, 346 men and 48 women applied for computer sciences. Of those offered places, 73 were men and 11 were women. This is 86.9 per cent men versus 13.1 per cent women. The ingrained societal attitudes towards what subjects and careers are more suitable for women and men are diluting the academic purity of the application system. The lack of females across the university studying more traditional, ‘male’ orientated subjects belies an inherent insecurity. Women feel restricted by their gender and by such anachronistic attitudes.

As an applicant assessing their chances in higher education, how are statistics such as these going to motivate a woman to apply for a subject which, according to the numbers, gives her very little chance of success? Cambridge may not directly be creating these gender confines, yet there appears to be very little effort to correct them.

The patriarchal origins of Cambridge mean that while the university may appear to be inclusive, the reality is very different. As the Interim Report from the Senior Tutors’ Sub-Committee on Women Students and Examination Results notes, “an institution which has been exclusively male for many centuries… is not necessarily transformed by the arrival of a handful of women.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than on Trinity College’s website, where the fellows are listed according to different categories. If one clicks on a list based on seniority, it is not until the fourth page that the first female name appears. 20 names per page. Over 60 men before one even reaches the first female name.

Furthermore, out of 31 colleges, there are only nine female Masters. Considering that three of these are at women’s colleges, this means that only six mixed colleges have a female head. Upon what basis are these decisions made? A large influence is tradition. Go into any dining hall of an older college and there are more male portraits than female, if any female at all. This is a damaging attitude, and irrespective of whether it is deliberate, it is deterring Cambridge from progressing.

Cambridge retains its innate traditional outlook on gender in academia and subconsciously confers this belief upon its students. It is no coincidence that many drinking societies still display sexist attitudes. If any female is to place confidence in the university, this patriarchal mindset must be adjusted, and it can be. We just need to face these facts and confront them. Women are perceived as a novelty, but we are here to stay.