There are days when science begins long before you enter the laboratory or the field. It starts at dawn, when the alarm clock goes off too early. When you mentally review the day's list: an experiment that can't be missed, a trip to the field that depends on the weather, an unfinished report, a meeting scheduled at the wrong time. In between, someone to wake up, someone to drop off, someone to call. And yet science moves forward.
At InnovPlantProtect, there are now 15 women who give a face to the science and innovation developed here. Women who represent commitment, demand, resilience, overcoming, quality, talent, excellence and creativity. But they are only part of a greater whole. There are many more - and each one brings with it a story that doesn't fit into a CV, a patent application or an article.
Today, February 11th, marks the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a UNESCO initiative that underlines the importance of the female role in the production of scientific and technological knowledge and the need to continue promoting equal access to careers in science and innovation. Portugal has encouraging figures: women represent almost 50% researchers in the country. It's a relevant figure, reflecting decades of progress. But the figures don't show what happens between them.
Because science, for many women, is made up of fragile balances.
There are women with intense family lives, others with more solitary journeys, still others who build support networks outside traditional models, with effort and creativity. There are difficult choices and decisions, unexpected circumstances, forced breaks, changes of pace, different phases of life. All legitimate. Many are invisible when you only look at the end result of a project, an article or a biosolution developed. - but they all influence the paths of science.
One day, one of our researchers - let's just call her that - told us that she had finished a field trial close to sunset. The phone rang while she was putting away her materials. It was the school. A delay. Nothing extraordinary. It was business as usual. She came home exhausted, with dirt still on her boots, opened her computer after dinner and went back to her data, because the experiment couldn't wait.
“It wasn't a heroic day,” she said. “It was just a normal day.”
And perhaps that is what is most remarkable.
In the field of crop protection, the work is demanding, technical and often unpredictable. It takes place in the laboratory and in the field, between strict protocols and decisions made under real conditions. It requires persistence, adaptability, attention to detail and an integrated view of problems. Characteristics that so many women bring with them - not by nature, but by experience, by path, by everything they have learned to manage at the same time.
Each personal story profoundly shapes the way we do science. The doubts, the challenges, the forced breaks, the changes of pace, the new beginnings. None of this is left at the laboratory door. It all silently enters into the way we observe, question and build knowledge.
To celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science is to recognise this reality as a whole. It is to honour the women who continue to do science despite the challenges — and often because of them. And it is to remember that innovation is also born from lives fully lived, shaped by imperfection, effort and courage.
Today we celebrate them. Not just for what they produce, but for all that they are. In science, in the field, in the laboratory - and in the life that happens in between.
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