After just nine days in post, the only woman to hold the Oxford Professorship of Poetry in its three hundred year history has stood down. Ruth Padel’s resignation is a sad and confusing event for feminists inside and outside the Oxbridge bubble.

On the one hand, we know that sexual abuse gets let off far too often and far too easily in our society. We know that men often abuse their many positions of power, and that these actions frequently go unpunished as women fear to speak out. In this sense, I empathise with Padel and her desire to prevent the injustice of allowing her competitor, Derek Walcott, to gain such a highly prestigious position when his private life was surrounded by such dark questions.

But on the other hand, the way in which Padel exposed these abuses is dubious at best, malicious at worst. If Padel ever had any serious concerns about the welfare of her students, she should have taken them straight to the appropriate authorities for investigation, not handed them surreptitiously to the newspapers with perfect timing to further her own career. Padel has admitted that her moves were naïve, but it is not enough - her resignation seems sadly necessary.

We can only hope that another woman replaces her in this centuries-long male dominated post. However, Padel’s behaviour forces us to question just how easy this will be. Her actions might have been indefensible, but perhaps she felt that, as a woman, her natural ability was not enough to get her to the top. If discrimination holds women back, they may continue to feel compelled to act in these ways. This is not justifiable, but it is perhaps understandable. Until we have a fully open competitive procedure to select academic appointments, we’ll never know if they are subject to scandalous manipulation on the part of certain individuals or something far worse - systemic gender bias.