Communicating advances in technology and robotics: a gender issue

Abstract

This paper is aimed at exploring from an intersectional gender perspective the evolution of Spanish media discourse in science and technology news. An intersectional feminist qualitative analysis is made of a sample of science and technology articles published in 2020 and 2021 in the digital editions of El País, El Mundo, and La Vanguardia, to identify and study the stereotypes and patterns of gender representation and explain the underlying power relations (Cucklanz, 2016). The main findings point out that the language with which technological progress is reported is still masculine: the generic masculine continues to be used in the wording and also in the images; it is found also that the future constructed by much of this information is still loaded with marked stereotypes of femininity; in contrast, we found some other news that offer female referents who a few years ago were not interviewed in the media as experts in science and technology. We conclude the necessity of gender mainstreaming training for journalism and communication professionals, designers of these technologies and managers of their diffusion. A social debate and ethical and political reflection are needed regarding the effects, not exclusively gender-related, of the new human-machine relations.