By comparison, only Belgium, Cyprus, Luxemburg and Malta have fewer lady professors than the Netherlands. Leader in Europe is Ireland: there, more than one in three professors is of the female gender. The European countries had agreed that in 2010 25% of the professors should be women, but the Netherlands is not going to get there by a long chalk, now being at 11.7 percent.
There are enormous differences between the universities. There are the most lady professors in Leiden (16.3 percent) and Nijmegen (16.7 percent). The fewest may be found at Eindhoven University of Technology: only 1.6 percent of professors there are women. At the sister universities of technology in Delft and Twente this is respectively 7 and 5.8 percent.
In comparison with 2003 all universities now employ more lady professors. In Maastricht and Delft their share has more than doubled and at Utrecht University, the University of Twente, the Free University and the University of Groningen it is 1.5 times higher.
The majority of lady professors can be found in the language & culture (18.4 percent), behavior & society (17.4 percent) and law sectors (16.4 percent). Hardly surprisingly, the technology sector is last: 4.8 percent.
On the career ladder the step from assistant professor to associate professor (UHD) is the most difficult for women. This move is awkward anyhow, seeing that there are far fewer associate professors than assistant professors. Indeed, there are more professors than UHDs. Comparatively speaking, it is easier for men to move up in academia: they are in a ‘glass elevator’.

Part-time
The question arises whether the difference in career options for men and women can be explained by sexism or not. Or might the reason be that women work part-time more often than men and that this limits their options? More women do in fact turn out to have part-time jobs. Out of assistant professors 64 percent of the men work full-time, whereas only 43 percent of the women do so. Among associate professors the percentages are respectively 71 vs. 49 and among professors 61 vs. 52. The writers of the monitor have not calculated the extent to which this accounts for the poorer academic careers of women. Nor have they compared the Dutch scores with universities abroad.(HOP)/.