Python using less than 1% of the CPU, how do I get Python to use more resources?

Question

I am working on translating a rather complex script from Matlab to Python and the results are fine. However Matlab takes around 5 seconds to complete, whether Python takes over 2 minutes for the same starting conditions. Being surprised of Python's poor performance I took a look onto CPU usage and noticed that Python does not use more than 1% while executing. Basically CPU usage is around 0.2% and barely changes whether im running the script or not. My system has 8 logical cores, so this does not appear to be a multi-core issue. Also, no other hardware is seeing any high usage (at least that is what task manager is telling me).

I am running my program with IPython 3.9.10 through Spyder 5.3.0. The Python installation is rather fresh and I did not change much except for installing a few standard modules.

I did not post any code because it will be a bit much. But essentially it is only a big hunk of "basic" operations of scalars and vectors. Also, there is a function that gets solved with scipy.optimize.minimize and nothing in the program relies on other software or inputs.

So, all in all my question is, where comes this limitation from and are there ways to "tell" Python to use more resources?