The Times Higher Education Supplement

A paper to be presented at the Women in Higher Education Network conference next week reveals that female academics have been subjected to physical attacks, stalking and heckling by students. In every case, the women reported inappropriate and often sexist management responses, the Nuffield Foundation-sponsored research says.

In one incident, a lecturer was pushed to the ground by a student who was unhappy with the results of an assignment. The response of managers focused on meeting the student's demands for a re-mark.

In another case, a student reportedly dropped his trousers and "stuck his backside in the air" during a lecture. When the lecturer complained, she was dismissed as "just a girl who wasn't able to manage the students".

The paper's author, Deborah Lee, a senior lecturer in sociology at Derby University, said: "My paper proposes that managers have to be made aware that their responses to unacceptable student conduct towards women academics are inappropriate."

Dr Lee said that academics were suffering from a culture within which they were perceived as possessing the power in the student-mentor relationship.

This was combined with an increased perception that the student is always right as a consumer.

But she said that higher education was "a sexist place", where mostly male managers regularly shifted the blame to staff in a sexist way.

"In one case a woman was being stalked by a student with serious personal problems. The stalker found her home phone number, although she was ex-directory, and followed her around the campus," Dr Lee said.

"But the management response was that the lecturer, as a woman, should have done more to look after and support a distressed student - it was ridiculous."

Kate Heasman, equality official at lecturers' union Natfhe, said: "I'm very surprised by these findings, as clearly the universities would be in breach of their duty of care towards staff.

"Every institution should have harassment policies that make it clear that students guilty of harassment or discriminatory behaviour will be dealt with under disciplinary procedures and expelled if necessary."

The problems facing female academics are highlighted in a further case this week. Norma Romm, a senior researcher at Hull University's School of Management, claimed that she was unfairly dismissed and victimised by the university, as it had failed to properly protect her from unacceptable student behaviour.

At a hearing at the Hull employment tribunal, she claimed unfair constructive dismissal, alleging that she had been forced to resign after ten years with the university as a result of its "failure to provide adequate protection to her as a lecturer against persistently disruptive students".

In her witness statement, read out at the tribunal on Tuesday, Dr Romm said that there had been a disruptive and racially motivated clash between Chinese and English students in her masters class, with English students behaving aggressively and insensitively towards their Chinese colleagues.

Dr Romm, who is being supported by the Association of University Teachers, claimed that she had been subjected to a malicious and vexatious campaign by the English students after she acted in support of the Chinese students.

A spokeswoman for Hull, which is contesting the case, said: "It would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time pending the outcome of the tribunal hearing." The case continued as The Times Higher went to press.

phil.baty@thes.co.uk