Another reason may be Greenwich’s subject mix, according to Professor Sarah Palmer, director of the Greenwich Maritime Institute, a university research centre. Greenwich has more health and social care, and education courses, areas in which women tend to better represented.Dr Liz Bacon is an exception. As head of the school of computing and mathematical sciences at Greenwich, she has excelled in a traditionally male-dominated area. Few universities have women heads of maths and science departments. Greenwich is even more unusual in that 40 per cent of its students in these subjects are women. The university has done a good job with equal opportunities, Dr Bacon says. “If I had not had an even chance, I don’t think I would be where I am today.

I certainly feel there has been no discrimination towards me at all.”Dr Jane Longmore, head of the school of humanities, believes that the university does not throw up the kind of impediments to women’s advancement that might exist at some other universities. “We have had a long-term policy that has been quite enlightened, and not just in the area of gender,” she says. “If you look at gender, race and disability, you will find that the university has done well.”Women are not only present in significant numbers in senior academic management, but also at the top level of the administrative office. The university secretary and registrar is a woman, Linda Cording, as is Christine Rose, director of student services and Sue Adams, director of estates.Blackstone believes she is well served by this army of successful women. Women are well-organised, entrepreneurial and emotionally literate, she says. “They are good at working out who they can rely on and who they can’t. These women in senior positions have already had to handle quite tricky management problems.”In addition women are famously good at multi-tasking, juggling a lot of things at one time, according to Professor Clare Mackie, head of Greenwich’s new school of pharmacy which it has established with the University of Kent at Medway.

“They can manage the operational side, having several balls in the air at once, and at the same time they can see the big picture,” she says.Blackstone is busy doing just that. She is racing around addressing staff on the three campuses about the university’s priorities and simultaneously finding the time to make contact with firms in Canary Wharf that might be able to offer students work placements and jobs. Staff say that she makes decisions quickly, a trait that they relish. She has moved Professor John Humphreys from pro vice-chancellor in charge of academic planning and widening participation to be in charge of research, enterprise and regional development, and has advertised his post internally. She intends to make that post a three-year appointment.At the same time she wants to crack two problems: to get students to re-register properly early on in their second and third years rather than allowing them to do so late; and to introduce a more rigorous regime for payment of fees.

Students who don’t re-register and don’t pay their fees by an agreed time will not be allowed to attend classes. In addition she is planning to slice through the paperwork surrounding appointments to chairs and readerships and to cut back on committees of the academic council.Her big priority, she says, is to improve job opportunities for the black and Asian students who form such a high percentage of the students on campus and face unacceptable levels of discrimination. Blackstone is determined to do all she can to help them get work. “She is quite inspiring and people are ready to be led,” says one insider. “I really think people will follow her where she wants to go.”l.hodges independent.co.uk.