A panel of five female Otago University academics spoke this week about working in a male-dominated workplace, as part of the Otago University Students' Association's Women's Week.
Political theory senior lecturer Vicki Spencer said the University of Otago was a better workplace for women than others she had worked at in Australia.
''My worst times were starting as a postgraduate student and my former supervisor decided that, now we were both equals, he could tell me that he loved me and pressured me for sex for 12 months, and my masters supervisor decided in the car park to lurch himself on me and put his tongue down my throat.''
Then, sexual harassment laws were non-existent and complaining would have jeopardised her career, she said.
''If I had actually done something about it when the rules came in, I would not have had a supervisor to be able to write me reference, which ultimately got me a Rhodes Scholarship.''
Many of the best academics in any given field were female but were often not cited by male academics.
''Men tend not to read women's work. They tend not to cite it.''
Film and media studies professor Hilary Radner said the ''hard work'' of feminists in the early 1960s should not be forgotten.
Gender studies senior lecturer Rebecca Stringer said feminism was cool again and there was a ''strong increase'' in students enrolling in gender studies.
Her class of 60 ''very engaged, opinionated'' students was the largest roll for the course since she started teaching at the University of Otago in 2000.
And feminist activism was increasing, Dr Stringer said.
''There's something special happening right now.''
But academic women in New Zealand and Australia were being ''contractually segregated'' with an ''overrepresentation of brainy, clever women in our universities'' on fixed-term contracts.
A fixed-term contract made it difficult to ''launch'' an academic career and women should ''think twice'' about accepting a fixed-term contract and work with unions to return ''permanency'' to the workforce.
Professor of management Elizabeth Rose and history senior lecturer Angela Wanhalla concluded the talks.
