Laura Favaro: City settles gender studies critic’s tribunal claim

A sociologist who claimed she was forced out of City, University of London for highlighting how gender-critical feminists are being silenced has announced she has settled her employment tribunal claim.

Laura Favaro, who was a research fellow at City’s Gender and Sexualities Research Centre, alleged that she was ostracised at her workplace and denied access to her research data after writing an article for Times Higher Education about how female scholars feared career damage if they criticised the idea that transgender women should be considered the same as people who are born female in all aspects of public life.

Dr Favaro, who is now based at Bournemouth University, also spoke to journal editors and reviewers who admitted rejecting papers on ideological grounds and supporting the censorship of gender-critical academics.

In the wake of its publication in September 2022, Dr Favaro’s article was praised for exposing persecution faced by gender-critical scholars but was also criticised as an “attack on trans people”. Senior scholars interviewed anonymously for the study broke cover to express their anger, claiming that Dr Favaro had breached ethical rules – claims she said were dismissed as “baseless” by a City investigation.

The Spanish academic claimed she was offered no support by her employer, which withdrew line management support and blocked access to her research database. According to her employment tribunal claim, for which she has crowdfunded more than £95,000, she was made redundant when her “fixed-term contract had expired – despite the fact that I have a permanent contract”.

Her tribunal was due to start in mid-September, but Dr Favaro announced on 31 July that she had settled her claim.

Announcing “excellent news” on her CrowdJustice page, she stated: “City University of London and I have settled my employment tribunal claim and I hope soon to be regaining access to the rest of my research data.

“I am extremely pleased with the resolution that we have reached.”

Referring to the financial donations from more than 2,700 individuals, Dr Favaro added: “This outcome was made possible by the generosity of people all around the world. It is only because of your donations that I have been able to pursue this claim with legal representation.

“I am also sincerely grateful for your messages of support and encouragement throughout these testing times.”

Remaining funds from her crowdfunding campaign would be “allocated to other similar cases on the CrowdJustice platform, to support someone with a case similar to mine, including loss of employment and the inability to cover legal fees otherwise”, Dr Favaro said.

A City, University of London spokesperson said the institution “regrets that the matters of dispute between Dr Favaro and the university resulted in employment tribunal litigation. City is however pleased that the parties have been able to resolve the matter in agreement between themselves.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com