Organisation - March 8, 2011

Many female students, few women at the top

Today is International Women's Day, a day to consider women's disadvantaged position in the world. The state of emancipation of women at Wageningen UR is summarized in ten statistics.

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For centuries women were not welcome at Dutch universities. In 1871, Aletta Jacobs became the first woman to be formally admitted to a university in the Netherlands. She studied Medicine at Groningen and went on to become a doctor. The first woman to be awarded an agricultural degree was Frieda Eversman in 1919. These days, female students are in the majority in Wageningen and at other universities. But that does not mean the process of emancipation has been completed. A few statistics summarize emancipation at Wageningen UR: many at the base, few at the top.

  • 100 percent of the cashiers in the Forum canteen are female

  • 89 percent of the Bachelor's students taking Nutrition and Health in Wageningen are female

  • 66 percent of staff working part-time at Wageningen UR are female

  • 56 per cent of the first-year students at Wageningen University are female

  • 50 percent of the PhD students at Wageningen are female

  • 41 percent of staff at Wageningen UR are female

  • 34 percent of people with a PhD from Wageningen (2009) are female

  • 12 percent of professors at Wageningen University are female

  • 7 percent of the Bachelor's students taking Agrotechnology are female

  • None of the members of the Wageningen UR Executive Board is female