Streets throughout the Netherlands are being unofficially renamed by activists in honour of venerated women after research showed that 88% of roads in large cities carry men’s names.

Signs bearing the names of female resistance fighters, mathematicians, writers and musicians, are being put up by the feminist group De Bovengrondse, which translates as “above ground”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An activist poses next to a sign paying tribute to Mies Bouwman, a Dutch TV presenter. Photograph: @ DeBovengrondse/Twitter

The movement was inspired by a survey by the news website De Correspondent, which found that only 12% of streets in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Groningen, were named after women. Often these were goddesses or the wives of famous men.

On a website dedicated to the campaign, the group says: “Street names are an overview of who our society decides to honour, and that is why we think it is time to change these relationships. What would it be like if more people literally felt at home with the name of a strong woman?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Activists install a sign celebrating Suze Groeneweg, a Dutch politician. Photograph: @ DeBovengrondse/Twitter

The first 12 women who were honoured by the group during a renaming session in Amsterdam include Ada Lovelace, the British mathematician who designed the first algorithm, Marie Anne Tellegen, a Dutch resistance fighter and Beyoncé, described by the group as “one of the most famous icons of our time” who has “made feminism and the position of Afro-Americans an explicit subject of her work”.

Rokin, a central thoroughfare in Amsterdam, has had a sign installed bearing the name Beyoncé Boulevard.

The initiative has now moved on to Rotterdam, Groningen, Utrecht and elsewhere, with the aim of renaming thousands of streets.

The group is placing the new street signs under the existing ones, to emphasise that the purpose is not forcing men to give way. The stated aim is to make people think and encourage the municipality to consider female alternatives when naming new housing estates.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The South African feminist and anti-apartheid activist Tania Leon is commemorated with her own street sign. Photograph: @ DeBovengrondse/Twitter

Santi van den Toorn, one of the movement’s founders, told the Het Parool newspaper: “It is always said that it is logical that there are so many male street names because history is written by men but there were also important women.

“The street names are of course only part of a bigger problem, but everyone lives in a street, so everyone understands this.”