Gender+ Equality in Academia and Research: legacy and future at WUR

The audience was treated on keynotes of three internationally renown experts, a farewell speech, a panel of WUR staff and alumnae, and a Poster FAIR. Lastly, all got surprised by the 25.000 euro birthday gift of the University Fund Wageningen to the Storm-van der Chijs Fund and the gifts from retiring Intersectional Gender Studies expert Margreet van der Burg to Omnia-WUR.

“There are definitely successes to celebrate, but the process is not linear." These words perhaps best capture the spirit of the international symposium organised at the occasion of Margreet van der Burg’s formal retirement from WUR, celebrated at Omnia on 22 April.

The symposium took stock of new insights and lessons learned from the wide range of efforts, achievements and backlashes towards gender⁺ equality in academia and in research in the domain of food, agriculture and the environment. Here you find the programme. Like blowing and following the fluff of the dandalion in the wind, the reflections inspired many participants to renewed engagement and creatively persist in taking new ways forward.

The symposium started with three brilliant speeches from internationally renown expert scholars ( Marcela Linková, Yvonne Benschop, and Farhana Sultana). Marcela Linková shared her research on what changemakers in Gender⁺ Equality work in academia and research encounter, and how management can better support. Here you can watch her lecture.

Yvonne Benschop elaborated from the INSPIRE project which new steps and challenges academia and research took on to boost intersectionality by operationalizing gender as intersecting with other social dimensions of (in)equality into their policies and practices. Farhana Sultana explained online how to connect new gender⁺ insights to climate challenges by breaking through engrained colonial mindsets of extractive practices, and work together with all affected with an open mindset enabling to hear and acknowledge their voices.

After the break Margreet van der Burg took us in her farewell address through her and WUR’s history on the theme of the day over the past 50 years.

Besides papers and books like Women, Wageningen and the World, one of the lasting legacies of Margreet’s efforts has been the creation of the Storm-van der Chijs Fund to support women at WUR to pursue their career. 

With a generous gift and support of the University Fund Wageningen, the fund got a new boost and could announce a next round of the Storm-van der Chijs stipends. A new call will be released at the end of 2026 to all WUR professor supervisors to nominate one of their promising female PhD candidates. The first ceremonial event will be on 11 February 2027, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

To gather Take Aways, a vibrant panel with WUR-staff and alumnae put impressive statements on the table. Most were awarded with applause as was the case for "If we don’t address gender⁺ inequalities, we reproduce them" (Aurora Montiel Somer) and "we can learn so much more from scholars in the South than we do by now" (Marielos  Peña Claros).

Finally, three posters from the Poster Fair were highlighted as most innovative (Nanako Nakamura) , best design (Annemiek Vroegop) and most inspiring team effort (Freedom Tours). Together they all showcased the rich, diverse, and creative ways in which WUR staff and students are working on gender⁺-related topics. 

The symposium concluded by presenting new additions to the screens at the Omnia Portrait Wall and a half year exhibition with free cards of the history of WUR women in a nutshell. Margreet van der Burg explained as her motivation for these gifts to encourage staying mindful to symbolism and legacies binding reflection on WUR's past with its future potential.

The symposium was a call to action not only to gender⁺ equality and decolonial change-makers (persist while keeping up the courage, caring for each other, building community) but also to institutions like WUR: protect your changemakers, even – or precisely – when they seem to be troublemakers (citing Marcela Linková). The current WUR Gender⁺ Equality Plan runs until 2028. Surely the work does not stop there! 

This afternoon brought wider understanding and inspiration to persevere in working towards sustainable embeddedness, care and protection for change and all change-makers, both immediate and longer-term.

The event was supported by the KLV Fund, Storm-van der Chijs Fund, University Fund Wageningen and WUR Corporate D&I and WUR Gender⁺ Equality Plan.