In all European countries, women have been having difficulties consolidating research careers. Literature on gender differences focus on three critical moments: choice of studies, the early stage of the scientific career and career advancement. In all three, gender plays an important role ( Etzkowitz, Kemelgor, Uzzi, 2000;, Bain and Cummings, 2000 ). Nevertheless, the early stage of the scientific career, in which family and career demands most often coincide is an especially sensitive moment that disadvantages women, and sometimes impedes them from the natural transition to consolidating their career. This stage includes the process of obtaining a PhD, enjoying fellowships abroad, post-docs in scientific institutions and competing for a permanent position. In this paper we look at the specific moment of carrying out fellowships abroad in important research centers. We examine the academic careers of the first Spaniards, man and women, who received a Fulbright grant between 1959 (when the program was first established in Spain), and the death of the Spanish dictator in 1975. Our aim is to see how gender and international mobility intertwined in the consolidation of academic careers under the Franco regime. 

In Spain, similar to other countries, women’s access to university was slow and difficult. At the end of the first decade of the 20^th century (1910-1911) there were only 33 women among 19,445 students (around 0.17%). The situation improved gradually and when the II Republic was established at the beginning of the 1930s they reached 6% (2.026 out of 33.633). However, the outbreak of the Spanish civil war and the subsequent seize of power by the dictator, Francisco Franco, changed this tendency. The family was converted into the only legitimate space for women to fulfill their destiny as mothers and wives. As a result, at the beginning of the 1970s women were only 26% of university students. It was only in the mid 1980s that the tendency changed and women became the majority (Flecha, 1989; Sanchdrián, 2008; Santesmases, 2000). However, when it comes to faculty staff, in Spain as well as in most other European countries,  women are still a pronounced minority. Even at the end of the 20^th century women were only just above 30 % among University professors in Spain and only 11% of full professors (García, Fresno Andreu, 2003).

 Travelling abroad as part of establishing an academic career was almost impossible in the early Franco period as Spain suffered from international isolation. In 1953, with the signing of a bilateral agreement with the USA, Franco received the long desired “American hug” which would ease his international rehabilitation.  This agreement also opened the way for the establishment of the Fulbright program in Spain, intended to foment “mutual understanding” between the Spanish and the American societies (Delgado, 2003; Delgado 2009). Those in charge of U.S. public diplomacy aspired to use those grants in order to diffuse American “high” culture as part of their campaign to undermine the anti-Americanism that characterized Spanish public opinion; conversely, the Spanish government was especially interested in receiving American Science and knowhow, badly needed for the country’s economic development. In this paper we first aim to evaluate the impact of the program on the academic careers of the first grantees, discerning differences between man and women. Secondly we intend to analyze the impact of the program on different academic fields. Lastly we would like to observe how the training in the USA was translated into local practices, and observe if there are any differences on the basis of gender. 

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