The former head of the London Irish Centre has been awarded more than £46,000 (€68,000) in compensation after she suffered a sustained campaign of sex discrimination and bullying.
Margaret Murnane was also unfairly sacked by the charity's trustees after her teenage son made calls to sex chat lines on her work phone.
Ms Murnane (48) was appointed the first female and lay director of the centre, an Irish Government-funded charity for the Irish migrant community, in September 2004. All previous directors since the charity was founded in 1954 had been priests.
She was given the task of introducing changes to make the charity more commercial.
The Central London Employment Tribunal was told that other senior staff could not accept that a woman had been put in charge.
The tribunal panel found that co-ordinator of welfare services John Twomey discriminated against Ms Murnane because of her gender, writing her "vitriolic" letters and making allegations about her drinking which were "inappropriate and wrong".
Instead of removing him, the tribunal found that the trustees of the centre took the easier option of asking Ms Murnane to resign.
It also found they made much of the "minor issue" of her 17-year-old son's behaviour, who also called his girlfriend in Colombia on the office phone.
When she refused to resign, they suspended and then fired her from her £40,000-plus post at the centre in Camden, north London, in May 2006.
Ms Murnane, who is originally from Tipperary town but now lives in Vauxhall, south London, successfully sued the trustees and Mr Twomey for sex discrimination and unfair dismissal.
The tribunal awarded her £46,537 for financial loss, injury to feelings, aggravated damages and personal injury. But speaking outside the tribunal, she said she had incurred £70,000 in legal costs.
"It has cost me money to clear my name, but I have been vindicated and the tribunal's decision has put paid to the nasty, malicious rumours that have been put out about me and all the gossip circulating," she said. "It was glaringly obvious from early on that the centre just was not ready to have a woman in charge. There was hostility against me as a woman right from the start."
The tribunal ruled: "We find that there was a natural deference by the staff, users, trustees and committees towards a male priest and a lack of such natural deference and possibly hostility to a female lay director.
"The trustees singularly failed to recognise this and did not appear to be supportive of the claimant's task, set out in her job description, of making changes at the LIC or recognise that these might not be popular with everyone. The trustees were overwhelmed by the attack on the claimant by Mr Twomey and seemingly incapable of dealing with it."
The tribunal said Mr Twomey, who formerly practised as a solicitor in Ireland, was "passionate and committed" to the welfare centres provided by the centre.
He regarded these as "the predominant reason for the centre's existence and its paramount function". But it found he resented Ms Murnane and resisted her authority over him. "His discrimination from the beginning of her employment was sustained for two years," it added.