February 11th, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, is approaching—a day to think critically, and also with hope. Not because women do science differently, but because even today they encounter obstacles more frequently than their male counterparts. The data from the report Women in Science in Numbers 2025 They help us understand where we are and, above all, where to go from here.

The US government has decided to stop funding research projects from laboratories and hospitals abroad that until now received grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). With this new cutback by the Donald Trump administration in science, thousands of international global health projects and clinical trials on emerging infectious diseases, cancer, and pediatric diseases that were underway between US centers and other institutions around the world are suspended. This has also been announced in Catalonia. The journal Nature In an article warning of a global paradigm shift, the NIH is the main funder of biomedical research worldwide, as confirmed by ARA.