Abstract:

In this paper we will focus on the results of the "PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY IN SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION" R & D project carried out in the period 2011-2014. The following aspects will be analyzed: the visibility of women scientists and researchers in the Spanish media; gender stereotypes in media representation and finally, the social perception of gender aspects in science. Regarding academic experiences, we will focus on the issue of training of future journalists in order to identify effective practices in the Higher Education area.

The media analysis included several steps: the computer software used for tracking and analysis of online information was the Swotti Premium program; the final result was a document base of 6,735 digital references. In this case, only 12% of the entries correspond to women researchers, compared to 88% of the events dedicated to male researchers. The analysis of the science news published in El País, El Mundo, Abc, La Razón and La Vanguardia during April, May, June, September, October and November, 2012, has shown that only 231.5 pages of the total of pages generated by the five newspapers during the period of study are dedicated to science. This represents 2.26% of all the published information. The analysis of the gender of the protagonists of the science news shows that male scientists are the protagonists of the stories much more often than their female counterparts. The newspaper with the greatest presence of female protagonists in science news is La Razón, with 20% of female protagonists, against 65% of articles focused on men. The rest of the articles, 15%, focused on both genders. Close behind is Abc with 16% of its science articles featuring women, against 71% featuring men, and 13% focused on both genders. El Mundo is the newspaper with the lowest percentage of articles focusing on women: 9.4%, against 76.5% dedicated to men and 14.1% dedicated to both genders. Looking at the average values, we can see that only 14.3% of the science news articles focus on women, against the 70.7% of articles dedicated to men. The rest of the articles, 15%, focused on both genders.

Based on these results, our research group launched several initiatives (workshops, focus groups, interviews, summer courses) aimed at professors, researchers and students teaching/studying Journalism in order to discuss new practices aimed to overcome gender bias in scientific information. In our analysis we will make a brief summary of all suggestions and recommendations for identifying barriers and developing strategies to overcome them. The final result of our project involves the development of a guide for gender equality training, inter alia, of future journalists.

Keywords:

Gender bias, scientific information, women scientists and researchers, media representation, journalism, gender equality training.