Dr. James Browne:

I will need a few minutes to explain. The university has a process for promotions to senior lecturer. On the fourth run of that system in 2008-09, the result was terrible, in that we promoted 16 people of which one was female. Prior to that, the results had been more balanced and there had not been a cause for great concern. When the result came out, the university was very concerned, as it should be, and it brought in experts to look at the promotion process, who revised it completely. The next scheme was not until 2013-14 as there had been a ban on promotions in universities brought about by the austerity measures. The processes in this round were very different. The same basic principles applied, such as academic peer reviews by colleagues and rankings on the basis of academic output, but there were a number of important differences arising from the advice of gender experts. One difference was a tremendous level of granularity in the assessment of candidates.