The Quiet Work of Leadership in Science

Leadership does not always arrive as confidence. Sometimes, it arrives as persistence. As the quiet decision to stay, to try again, to believe that your work matters even when the path feels uncertain. For many women in science across the Global South, leadership begins exactly there, in moments that no one applauds but that change everything.

Long before titles or recognition, leadership takes shape in daily choices. In choosing curiosity over fear. In choosing science in contexts where the road is steeper and the margins narrower. In choosing to continue, even when resources are limited and the future feels fragile. Leadership, in these moments, is not loud or visible. It is deeply personal.

Leadership starts the moment you realize that your journey is not an exception, but a contribution.

Women scientists in the Global South become translators because they must, and because they care. They learn to move between languages, disciplines, and worlds. They translate data into decisions that matter, research into solutions that touch real lives, and global knowledge into local action. Through translation, science becomes human, relevant, and accessible.

When you translate knowledge, you give science a wider heart.

Translation also means translating yourself. Your accent, your perspective, your way of asking questions. It means showing up fully in spaces where you were not always expected, and trusting that your voice carries value precisely because of where it comes from.

Leadership grows through connection. Across the Global South, women scientists build relationships that sustain not only careers, but hope. They connect across borders and generations, sharing opportunities, opening doors, and reminding one another that no one walks this path alone.

Every connection you create is a quiet act of leadership.

Through networks like OWSD, connection becomes collective strength. It transforms isolation into belonging and individual effort into shared momentum. In these spaces, leadership is not about being ahead of others, but about walking together with intention.

Over time, leadership settles into trust. Trust built patiently through integrity, care, and consistency. Trust earned in laboratories where collaboration thrives, in classrooms where confidence is nurtured, and in communities where science becomes a shared language rather than a distant authority.

Trust is leadership that remains when visibility fades.

For women in the Global South, building trust also means learning to trust themselves. Trusting their expertise when doubt appears. Trusting their intuition when the path is unclear. Trusting that leadership does not require perfection, only presence and courage.

On this International Day of Women and Girls in Science, leadership invites a moment of pause. Not to measure how far you still have to go, but to recognize how far you have already come. To honor the times you translated complexity into clarity. The moments you connected people and possibilities. The trust you built, often without realizing it.

Leadership is a choice you have already made, many times.

I invite you to reflect on your own leadership. On what you have achieved, on the impact you have created, and on the strength you have cultivated along the way. And then, gently but firmly, ask yourself what leadership still calls you forward. What voice is waiting to be used more fully. What future is ready for your decision.

The future of science is not only written in discoveries, but in courage.

And that courage, today and always, lives in you.