On the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar has Professor Alexandra Figueiredo representing this very extensive class of Portuguese female researchers. Her faces, along with other female faces, have featured since 2016, the exhibition held in honour of Portuguese women scientists, highlighted in the Pavilhão do Conhecimento. She was one of the first 100 scientists to join the group that marks the strong female contribution to the progress of national Science and Technology. As Alexandra Figueiredo (Archaeologist and lecturer at the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar) says "for a long time, women remained in the shadow of major technological or scientific developments. Without much appreciation or recognition, they were little valued in the participation of the construction of critical and evolutionary thought. However historians of gender studies have assumed their fundamental, if not decisive, role in some of the most pertinent questions of current construction and knowledge.

Today, overcoming ideological and even cultural barriers, women can assume themselves as they are: Faces that change the world. But there is still a way to go, our capacity for intervention has made a great leap forward since the time of the first demonstrations, but this situation, with regard to equality of opportunity in gender, still needs to follow its course in order to be effective", she added. In this perspective she stresses that “women should be valued, not for their role in family, but for their constructive professional capacity", and in this sense claims "that what we live, the experiences all over the world tell us that many steps still have to be taken".

These are different times and the world does not move in the same way. We hope that remembering this day can serve as one of those steps and, step by step, reinforce the valorisation of the role of women in our society. This is our small contribution.

May these few words be the women’s shout in the fight for equal opportunities and professional enhancement.