Lecturer attacks `sexist' promotions

A history lecturer is set to engage Cambridge University in a historic legal battle in an attempt to make it overhaul its promotion procedures.

Dr Gillian Evans, 52, who has worked at the university for 18 years, said current procedures for promoting lecturers to professors were unfair, muddled, and possibly sexist. Now she plans to apply for judicial review by the High Court of the university's promotion system. Her first step will be to apply for leave to launch her claim - an application she hopes will be heard by the High Court within months.

Dr Evans said Cambridge was full of lecturers in their fifties and sixties who should be professors, and as a result were losing pay and status. Only a few lecturers were promoted to professorships every year, the promotions were arbitrary and unsystematic - and the overwhelming majority went to men, she said.