University College London has been accused of hypocrisy for paying women less than men at its Qatari campus.
The criticism came after it gave a lower housing allowance to female staff there — yet accepted the resignation of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir Tim Hunt for allegedly sexist remarks.
It emerged that a female staff member at UCL Qatar complained last year that the allowance for married women was far less than for married men.
In emails released under the Freedom of Information Act, a human resources consultant working for the university admitted this was “clearly discriminatory in UK employment terms”.
Qatari campus director Thilo Rehren wrote to UCL’s vice-provost for student affairs Andrew Smith: “Current practice (which is informed by Qatari norms) treats our employees materially different depending on their gender, which is morally and legally not acceptable, leads to serious dissatisfaction at work and poses a risk for staff retention.”
A spokesman for UCL said: “Clearly this was never intended as an intentional policy and as soon as the anomaly came to light we took steps to rectify it. The policy change was backdated so that staff were not disadvantaged.”
