Varsity has collated data indicating that women are still under-represented at all levels of academia. We analysed statistics relating to the University and its constituent colleges as well as national higher education institutions. Women are less likely to supervise, lecture and tutor undergraduates. Female professors are a significant minority. The higher up the academic career ladder you look, the fewer women you will find.

The Varsity News Team has examined gender inequality in various forms. We explore whether men are driven to a greater extent by competitiveness, driving a minority in academia towards research misconduct. A Cambridge academic has gone as far as to suggest separating men and women in employment is likely to decrease the pay gap. The story is not just about divides between sexes, however. Men and women have joined forces to organise Cambridge’s contributions to celebrating V-Day next week, a day designed to raise consciousness of violence against women and girls. Finally, we broaden our horizons beyond the bubble to explore how one Cambridge-based charity is working to improve the educational prospects of girls in the developing world.

Freedom of Information requests submitted to all the Cambridge colleges reveal that at college level, the representation of women among academics varies significantly. At Queens, just 17% of all its Fellows are female.  At St Johns and Selwyn, the figure is 18%. Significantly, those colleges with the highest gender gap were also less likely to have female staff in the most senior positions, and more likely to have a smaller percentage of their student body identify themselves as being of non-white ethnicity.

Not all colleges paint the same picture. 58% of Murray Edwards’s Fellowship is female. At Girton, the figure is 52%, while at Homerton it stands at 38%. Older and larger colleges, with a less ethnically diverse student population, are less likely to have a fellowship which reflects the number of women in academia nationally.

The University of Cambridge has also yet to considerably narrow the gender pay gap for its staff. The average salary for a male employee at the University currently stands at £39,698, while for women it is £31,023. The overall pay gap is therefore 21.9%. This has been narrowing by 0.5% annually over the last five years, since the 24% recorded high in 2007. The University boasts stringent regulations and policies designed to ensure that men and women are on the same pay scale and represented equally, but the rate of change remains stubbornly slow. Moreover, women are less likely to be represented in senior positions of academia and management. Just 16.2% of the University’s professors are women, compared to 33.5% of lecturers.

The University and College Union (UCU) recently conducted a wide-ranging national study into the under-representation of women and ethnic minorities in academia. Their report established that over the last five years the national higher education sector has achieved on average a figure of over 50% for the representation of women among its employees. Cambridge has yet to break this halfway barrier. Nationally, women make up 46.8% of non-professoriate academic staff, but less than 20% of professoriate staff. UCU calculates that it will take nearly 40 years for women to be represented at the professorial level in the same proportion as they are currently represented at the non-professorial level. The picture is a bleak one.

The problem of under-representation in UK academia does not stem from an absence of degree-educated women. In 2010-11, 55% of undergraduate students were female. Equally, the fact that women are well represented at lower levels of academia demonstrates that the problem is not a lack of motivated candidates.

This leaves two possibilities open: either women are being turned away at the highest levels, or they aren’t applying.

The UCU study convincingly demonstrates that it is the latter explanation which holds. Four times fewer women apply for the top professorial roles than men. When women did apply, they were actually more likely to secure the posts. Why, then, aren’t women applying?

One explanation relates to the absence of female role models, and the notion that women simply aren’t prepared to ‘sit at the table’. The prospect of entering a male dominated environment, where competition and tussling for power are seen as prerequisites for promotion, is not an enticing prospect. Certain workplace behavior is perceived to be characteristically male, putting off potential female applicants. 

With an employment system geared towards cultivating, promoting and rewarding male characteristics, it is little surprise that few women apply for the top jobs. Maternity leave, and the difficulties of combining motherhood and a career, are further concerns. Alice Figes, a member of the Oxford Feminist Network, points out “all of my female friends have thought about how they will balance family and work in the future. Almost none of my male friends have.” Anne-Marie Slaughter clarified the issues powerfully in her widely read article, ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All’, “Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women. That will be a society that works for everyone.”

Asked for her thoughts on these figures Sylvana Tomaselli, a Fellow at St John’s College, noted that “The problem with simply focusing on statistics, specifically in relation to the proportion of men and women at the top of the career ladder, is that it paints an overly simplistic picture. Equality does not have to be equated with similarity of achievements. The point is that you ought to be able to value different career choices. Measurement of success in this linear, top down fashion is a simplistic, and possibly a patriarchal, way of looking at the problem.”

The gender issue is a complex one. The Varsity News Team at least attempts to shed some light.