Share of female professors, in the Netherlands and EU countries

Personnel

Data publication

What percentage of Dutch professors is female? And how do the Dutch figures compare to other countries in the European Union? In this data publication we share the figures of various Dutch universities, university medical centers (umcs) and scientific areas. We show that the percentage of female professors in the Netherlands is lower than in most European countries.

In short

  • The proportion of female professors in the Netherlands has increased over the years to 30% in 2024.
  • The technical universities in the Netherlands have the smallest share of female professors.
  • Compared to other EU countries, a relatively low proportion of Dutch professors are women.

What is the proportion of female professors within Dutch universities?

Source: Universities of the Netherlands (UNL)/ the WOPI database on university personnel
Notes: The data are obtained from the WOPI-file of UNL. See 'Additional information WOPI'.

Analysis
In 2024, 30% of professors are women. This is excluding professors in the field of health sciences. The general broad universities have a higher share of female professors than average. The technical universities have a relatively small proportion of female professors.
 

In which scientific areas do most female professors work?

Source: UNL/ the WOPI database on university personnel

Analysis
Over the past ten years, the share of female professors in the Netherlands shows a steady increase among all scientific areas. Since 2016, the Humanities and Behavioral sciences, as well as Law are the only scientific areas in which over a quarter of the professors (in fte) is female. The lowest share of female professors can be found in the scientific fields Economics, Nature sciences and Engineering with percentages of 19%, 20.5% and 20.7% in 2024, respectively. 
 

What is the proportion of female professors within university medical centers?

Source: Monitor on female professors of the Dutch Network of female Professors
Notes: Based on data provided by the university medical centers. Reference date: between 31 December 2024 and 1 July 2025. Based on absolute numbers of people.

Analysis
The monitor on female professors, published by the Dutch network of female professors, presents data on female professors at the university medical centers. The average share of female professors at these centers was 33.2% in 2025. To compare the share of female professors at the university medical centres to the share of female professors at the universities, we look at the share of female professors in 2024 in which 31.6% was female. This is bit higher than the average of female professors at most universities. The share varies between 28.1% and 39%. Compared to 2024, the share of female professors increased the most at University Medical Centre of Groningen by 3.7 percentpoints. 
 

How do these figures compare to other European countries?

Source: European Commission, She figures 2024
Notes: The She Figures data collection defines four groups of personnel categories: A, B, C and D. The figure has data on category A, which is defined as the category with the highest rank. There is no formal international classification on academic grades. This can cause some differences between the countries. The data are based on person data. The data for the Netherlands are based on data of the Association of universities in the Netherlands and do not include the university medical centers. The countries are abbreviated using the first three letters of the country. For example: Norway = NOR, France = FRA and so on, except for Denmark = DNK, Austria = AUT and the Netherlands = NLD. For the United Kingdom, the country code is limited to two letters (UK). Data for the same years is not available for all countries. Dates until 2021 for: Norway, Finland, France, Austria, Portugal, Spain and Denmark. Dates until 2019 for Belgium. Data for the United Kingdom, Iceland and Switzerland are for the years 2016 and 2018. Data for Greece are for the years 2016 and 2022

Analysis
The share of female professors has increased for all countries since 2018, except for the UK and Iceland where the share has remained the same (NB. data for the same years is not available for all countries, see note below graph for the years regarding available data per country). Since 2022, the Netherlands has been in the middle of other European countries in the share of female professors. In 2018, the share in the Netherlands (22.3%) was much lower than in other countries and the Netherlands belonged to the bottom row. With a share of 27.3% in 2022, the Netherlands still lags behind the EU-27 average (29.4%).

The data are obtained from the WOPI-file of the VSNU (the association of collaborating universities in the Netherlands). The WOPI-data (Information on scientific education personnel) is annually requested by the VSNU from fourteen universities, conform a standardized format and agreed definitions. The reference date for the WOPI-data is 31st December for each year. All personnel is included who have a permanent or temporary employment contract or contractual agreement for a fixed number of working hours at a university. Student-Assistants excluded.

Over time, the personnel of almost all the academic hospitals have moved from the medical faculty or university as employer towards the academic hospital or the university medical centre (umc). The scientific field (HOOP-classification) Health sciences therefore shows an inconsistent pattern over time and is therefore not included in the data and graphs.

For an explanation of the used definitions and acronyms we kindly refer to the web page Definitions for Science in Figures.

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