A UNIVERSITY lecturer must wait until next month to find out if her claim of being overlooked for a prestige job is successful.

Dr Barbara Ingham, 56, told a Manchester tribunal she was ignored for a professorship by her bosses at Salford University because the authorities were reliant on "male dominated" committees.

Evidence in the tribunal concluded yesterday and it was adjourned for the panel to decide the outcome.

Dr Ingham, an international economics expert, said in one year alone nine men were appointed as professors above her and she would not be invited to meetings, which needed her expertise.

But when she asked for explanations from senior figures at Salford University, Dr Ingham started getting letters saying if she did not take early retirement she would lose her job, the hearing was told.

Later Dr Ingham was not invited to a university lunch for the Department of Economics, where she had become the first woman to attain an academic post and was the sole lecturer in International Economics.

She was also ignored when offering to put her self forward as a university representative.

And for three years she was unable to go networking for promotion because she was assigned to time consuming undergraduate administrative work known by colleagues as the "graveyard of ambitions."

Eventually Dr Ingham, of Waddington Road, Waddington, lost her lecture course in International Economics after returning from a summer break to find no room were ready for her.

But Dr Ingham was accused by lawyers for Salford University that she was "not sociable enough" to win the prestige post.

The university said there was a policy of offering early retirement to anybody over 50 and Dr Ingham was no exception. The university said it was not unfairly discriminating against Dr Ingham arguing a higher percentage of women were awarded professorships than men in 1999.

Dr Ingham was the only female candidate not to be promoted out of the 21 finalists -- six of whom were women.

The university said Dr Ingham's application was simply not good enough for the university to justify promoting and was down to her own deficiency.

The hearing was told Dr Ingham had been employed by the University of Salford since 1969.