Portugal is news out there and leaves Spain stunned

The number of Portuguese women who are interested in the areas of science and technology led the newspaper El País to devote an article to this topic.

A recent OECD study “broke with all stereotypes” by revealing that Portugal is the country where women are most likely to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

A report published this week by the newspaper El País gives an account of this and the surprise is evident in the way the neighboring journalist begins his text: “It was already known that Portuguese is the one with the most cork in the world, who drinks more wine and who more cod consume. But what nobody calculated in the land of fado is that Portugal was the country of women scientists or, at least, the country with more women studying science.

OECD data show that 57% of Portuguese study science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In other words, Portugal collected “17 points more than Silicon Valley of the United States, 22 points more than Spain or Denmark and more than twice that of Japan.”

Although it emphasizes that “one thing is women who are licensed, another is the one who works in the area and another is the leadership positions that women occupy”, the newspaper El País does not fail to point out that “in Portugal two women run the largest foundations “referring to the Champalimaud Foundation, led by Leonor Beleza, and the Gulbenkian Institute of Science, by Monica Bettencourt.