Reported by KaYin Leung and Valentijn Kremaker

Global Gender Gap Index 2014: 14th

Overall situation of women in mathematics

The overall situation of women in mathematics in the Netherlands has not changed significantly since our last report. The latest data on women in mathematics in the Netherlands were collected and published in 2008 by NWO (the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) and can be found in the table below.

Table 1: statistics for women in mathematics at universities in the Netherlands

The data show that even though emancipation of women in science in general, and in mathematics in particular, has been given priority on the political agenda for a number of years, not much measurable progress has been made in the number of women in post-doctoral academic positions.

There are no new statistics on the number of women employed, but apparently NWO (the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) is currently collecting these data again.

EWM activities and membership

There is a EWM-the Netherlands website www.uu.nl/ewmnetherlands

There are currently around 120 people (almost all women) on the EWM-the Netherlands mailinglist, that is also used to forward important information from EWM, job openings, etc.

Last Wednesday, the annual EWM-the Netherlands event took place. Press release about this meeting is included below.

Last Wednesday, 4 March 2015, the annual meeting of the European Women in Mathematics – the Netherlands took place at the Academiegebouw in Utrecht. It was generously sponsored by Platform Wiskunde Nederland (PWN).

« The afternoon started off with four excellent talks by female researchers, each representing one of the four mathematics clusters in the Netherlands: Charlene Kalle (STAR, Leiden University) explained how random continued fractions arise on the intersection of ergodic theory and number theory; Miranda Cheng (GQT, University of Amsterdam) introduced the remarkable connection between monstrous sporadic groups and modular objects; Martina Chirilus-Bruckner (NDNS+, University of Leiden) shed some light on the mathematics (partial differential equations) behind optical fibres. Finally, Karen Aardal (Diamant, TU Delft) told us how mathematical algorithms can save lives by calculating the optimal positions and movements of ambulances in the Netherlands. Afterwards, Petra de Bont (NWO) commented on the deplorable situation of women in mathematics in Europe and in the Netherlands in particular. She then invited the audience to engage in a discussion which yielded several helpful recommendations to NWO and mathematics departments, that could help to improve this situation. »

EWM has only 6 registered members in the Netherlands.