Quarter of professors in Belgium are women

Four years ago, only one in five professors at Belgian universities was a woman, but women currently represent one in four professors, according to a calculation by Ghent student magazine Schamper based on the most recent personnel statistics from the Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR), De Morgen reports.

The statistics show that the Free University of Brussels (VUB) has the highest proportion of female professors of all the universities, with 30%. The VUB is followed by KU Leuven (26%), University of Antwerp (25%), Hasselt University (24%) and Ghent University (23%). The magazine adds that recent figures from the end of 2014 indicate that the number of female professors at Ghent University has risen to 25%.

Ghent rector Anne De Paepe (pictured) acknowledges that there is still a lot of work to be done: "There is definitely progress, but it is slow." According to De Paepe, a combination of factors makes women underrepresented among professors, such as a historically larger pool of male doctoral students. Nowadays, however, there are just about as many women as men graduating with a PhD, she adds, but there are also still a number of traditional gender role issues at play.