The ‘ladette culture’ is leaving women so image-conscious that they lack academic confidence, the Principal of Newnham College has said.

Speaking at the Girls’ Schools Association Annual Conference last week, Dame Patricia Hodgson said that women were held back by a fear of failure and were less capable of seizing opportunities because of society’s emphasis on their looks.

‘For young girls in a mixed environment it’s looks alone that determine the pecking order,’ she said. ‘It’s the power of ladette culture. Academic achievement is frowned upon. But academic achievement is something that will remain with them forever.’

The Principal of the all-girls College believes this culture leaves girls thinking that they are less intelligent than boys. She described to the conference how a number of Newnham students told her in Freshers’ Week that they thought they had made it to Cambridge ‘by mistake’.

‘At Newnham, young women strike me as less confident than we had been 40 years ago,’ she added. ‘They may be streetwise but they are not intellectually confident.’

Dame Hodgson attended Newnham herself in the 1970s. She revealed in an interview with the Guardian in 2007 that she too had experienced a lack of confidence.

‘I was an Essex schoolgirl who thought Oxbridge too posh, too challenging and too expensive to contemplate,’ she explained. ‘I thought I’d be a fish out of water. I thought I’d fail.’

Even now she seems to have doubts about the treatment of women in today’s society. ‘One does wonder if the equal opportunity, which we have been led to believe is there, is really there,’ she told the conference.

But the Principal is keen to remind female students of the opportunities they do have. ‘Young women may now assume that equal pay is assured and that they can balance life and work on a pretty level playing field.’

She offers a solution: that young women be given positive role models to teach them confidence. Current ones, she felt, were not particularly constructive.

Citing a recent survey on the 100 most powerful women, she noted: ‘it included only 7 or 8 senior businesswomen and a handful of academics and politicians.’ Meanwhile, Oprah, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé Knowles and Ellen Degeneres all appeared in the top 10.

This speech happened to coincide with a nude photo shoot in Varsity’s fashion section, which raised the question once more among students about the portrayal of women at Cambridge.

‘It’s not that I felt the girl was being objectified,’ a Clare student said. ‘I just didn’t understand why it was necessary for her to be naked.’

Partial nudity in Cambridge publications is not new. Last year, ‘Tab Totty’ caused much controversy, not only among students but even in the national press.

Rowenna Davis, writing for the Guardian, criticised the editors’ choice for this page-three style photo-shoot, saying: ‘if I were Cambridge’s women’s officer, I’d definitely be making some welfare enquiries.’

The women’s officer for Pembroke College, however, felt that the shoot was a step in the right direction towards the human body not just being about non-relational sex and inequality.

‘It was a risk, and ultimately I’m glad the photographer and Varsity took it,’ she added. ‘It was understated and beautiful, but I understand that others may have interpreted it differently,’ she added.