Where it all began: that one woman
The presence of women researchers in the academic ranks of Vrije Universiteit Brussel has grown over recent decades, but for a long time it noticeably lagged behind — compared with students and support staff. Women moved up more slowly, more often ended up in temporary posts and faced greater obstacles to top roles such as dean, director or rector. Former rector Caroline Pauwels: “It is a struggle of women and men together, against every form of inequality, disadvantage and lack of freedom.”
“Being the only woman at that level is not an easy position. First of all, you needed a man to put your name forward, otherwise you didn’t get in. And secondly, you had no choice but to behave like a man. That was the only way to achieve your goals.”
Speaking is Els Witte, who in 1994 became the first female rector at VUB and the second in Belgium. Her appointment was a first high point for the role of women scientists at VUB. But it was certainly not structural. It was precisely exceptional that a woman had climbed so high in the university hierarchy. Until then, there had been little attention for women academics at VUB and other universities.
Nor was Els Witte herself able to bring about a turnaround. Despite her enormous stature and nationwide renown as a historian, during her rectorship from 1994 to 2000 she mainly had to hammer home the importance of a Flemish university in Brussels and fight against budget cuts.
“As a woman it was not always easy in a man’s world. That was true not only at VUB; I experienced the same as chair of the Board of Directors of the VRT. At that time there were hardly any women in senior positions. I was very often ‘that one woman’ who was asked to join because a number of women-friendly men felt things had to change.”The culture at VUB naturally reflected the spirit of the times. But in the university’s early years there were other fires to fight. The very founding in 1970 and the survival of a Dutch-language university in francophone Brussels demanded huge energy. Another major priority in that period was the democratisation of higher education: the university had to make study accessible to all layers of society. The fact that girls were part of that was not yet widely understood. And then there was the constant battle over funding: between 1970 and 1991, the Belgian government cut its contribution to universities from 0.61% to 0.41% of Gross National Product.
Interest in the position of women scientists at Flemish universities grew only very slowly. It was not until 1992 that the Flemish Interuniversity Council made a distinction between men and women in its reports. For a long time, women formed a small minority in academia and rarely reached the top. But as a progressive university, VUB did stand out from the Flemish landscape. Among the Independent Academic Staff (ZAP), the share of women at VUB in 1994 was higher than at several other universities. The same was true for other women researchers.
Yet VUB’s success was partly an illusion. At VUB, the number of women students tripled between 1973 and 1993. But the share of women researchers rose only from 17.6% to 27%. According to historian Machteld De Metsenaere, in the book De tuin van Akademos, women far more often started at the bottom in temporary assistant posts with very limited prospects of promotion. Those who started like that were also more likely to drop out: over 90% of women did not manage to secure a permanent appointment, while 85% of men did. And if, as a woman, you did clear that hurdle, you were less likely to be promoted: only 5.5% of women became lecturers and barely 1.8% moved up to professor.
Een grote sprong
After Els Witte’s rectorship, it took more than two decades before VUB made another major leap forward. In 2005, VUB launched its diversity plan. Machteld De Metsenaere was one of the driving forces here too. With this plan, attention to the position of women academics was structurally embedded in the university’s policy. VUB was the first in Flanders to do so.
By 2005, women were already well represented among early-career researchers, but higher up the hierarchy their advance stalled. Temporary contracts, an unequal share of care work and academic habits “still too often operating according to male norms” choked off the “pipeline”. VUB therefore focused on more diverse committees, better support and more flexible career paths.
The gains followed: the share of women professors rose from around 20% in 2010 to 26.4% in 2013, but the top remained narrow. The Gender Action Plan of 2014 aimed to open up the organisation further to women. Target figures were introduced per faculty, selection and appointment committees had to be at least one-third women, and junior women researchers received tailored coaching and support in combining work and private life. The Equality Action Plan 2019–2021 went further still: bias training, inclusive job adverts, strict monitoring and a visible equality office were added. Progress continued, but the threshold of one-third women professors had still not been crossed.
That is why, in the 2024–2026 Gender Equality Plan, VUB explicitly set a minimum of 33% women professors, expanded monitoring of recruitment, launched targeted training and started a pilot mentoring scheme for staff careers. At the same time, work–life measures were strengthened — from funds to arrange cover and flexible working patterns to breastfeeding and pumping facilities — and the reporting point for wellbeing and unwanted behaviour (YANA, You Are Not Alone) was given a permanent place with clear procedures. Finally, the university linked its ambitions to clear responsibilities, annual progress reporting and a transparent promotion framework for academic staff, so that career progression becomes visible and sustainable.
Break down the walls
The story so far is not the sum of isolated initiatives, but a structural cultural change: the “pipeline” has been widened at entry, supported in the middle and opened up at the top — so that talent no longer leaks away, but flows through to where it belongs: the academic backbone of VUB.
This long struggle for women in academia culminated in the rectorship of Caroline Pauwels (2016–2022). She died on 5 August 2022 during her second term, but her scholarly insight, ideas, gentle spirit and public presence continue to shape the university, the city and Flanders. As a woman rector, she set the tone from her very first opening speech: “Break down the walls” — the metaphorical walls between campus and city, between disciplines and even between science and art had to be torn down.
In this way she explicitly positioned VUB as an urban engaged university. Her influence is still felt today. Her book Ode aan de verwondering is becoming a classic and is currently being brought to the stage in theatres in both Flanders and Wallonia. The warm, humanist compass of Caroline Pauwels continues to reach a wide audience.
In her book Ronduit, she writes that the struggle for women’s rights is a struggle for equality. “It is anything but a struggle of women against men. Men should in fact stand up for women’s rights. It is a struggle of women and men together, against every form of inequality, disadvantage and lack of freedom. Above all, it is a struggle for humanity and kindness.But feminism is a house with many rooms, and there is, even among feminists, quite some disagreement about what exactly we should understand by the term. Still, that minimal description of what we mean by feminism — striving for equal rights for men and women — seems sufficient for now at least to know what we are talking about. Feminism is humanism.”
Today, both society and VUB recognise that women researchers are not a footnote in history. They are often the driving force behind innovation in science — from the calculations behind digital images to immunotherapy, from AI climate models to gender studies and care. The university continues to support women academics with concrete measures — and with visible role models that allow a new generation to align ‘seeing’ and ‘becoming’.
Female science icons
These policies have increasingly allowed women to develop their talents. Throughout its history, VUB has produced many outstanding women scientists whose abilities might otherwise have gone largely untapped. Here we highlight a few examples who have made a name for themselves in science worldwide.
In the exact sciences, Irina Veretennicoff opened up new horizons. After her PhD in 1973, she helped build programmes in applied physics and photonics, and put VUB on the international map with research ranging from non-linear optics to metamaterials. Remarkably, in 1990 she became both the first woman and the first foreigner to receive the Russian State Prize for Physics and Mathematics.
At the boundary between cosmos and particles, Catherine De Clercq built up a new field of research: astroparticle physics. She launched Belgium’s contribution to the IceCube neutrino observatory and is regarded as the founder of the discipline in Flanders — a legacy that continues well beyond her retirement.
Meanwhile, Vera Rogiers shifted the ethical and methodological boundaries of toxicology. As long-time head of IVTD and later director of the Innovation Centre-3Rs, she turned VUB into a benchmark for animal-free research methods; at the same time, she advises Europe on consumer safety as co-chair of the SCCS.
And the legacy reaches far beyond Brussels: Ingrid Daubechies, VUB alumna and a world authority on the wavelet theory underpinning modern image compression and medical imaging, received the National Medal of Science in Washington in early 2025; at the same time, she kept returning to the Brussels campus as a visiting lecturer and driving force behind Wiskunnend Wiske, the VUB competition that explicitly aims to spark girls’ interest in mathematics. The New York Times dubbed her “The Godmother of the Digital Image”. Sometimes VUB recognises historic impact from outside: Marleen Temmerman received an honorary doctorate in 2011 for her global work on reproductive health — a signal that women’s scientific clout also shapes the public agenda.
These top women scientists from the past are the forerunners of the current generation. They are more numerous than ever, more influential than ever, and prove that we cannot afford to waste talent.
