Vol. 8 No. 16 (2021): Gender Inequalities in Digital Communication and Culture
Coordinators:Patricia Corredor Lanas (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and coordinator of the Communication and Digital Culture section), Javier Marzal (Universidad Jaume I and 2nd vice-president of the AE-IC) y Ana Jorge Alonso (Universidad de Málaga).
The feminist movement and women academics began to focus in the 1960s on the relationship between women's material conditions and their reflection in the symbolic sphere. In short, the debate that Judith Butler and Nancy Fraser would hold decades later on the tensions between recognition and redistribution is outlined, and not only in terms of the discrimination suffered by women, but also on other gender inequalities that include the LGBTQ+ collective.
The ease of access to sources means that symbolic discrimination is the field in which this approach to research has mainly operated, especially in the social sciences and humanities. The consequence is that it is in this field where the largest body of academic work has been accumulated, most often in the service of social transformation for the sake of a more equitable society. The acceleration and expansion, in recent decades, of so-called cognitive capitalism has also brought with it the need for feminist analyses and reflections on the political economy of communication and culture. We cannot fail to mention Michèle Mattelart's Women and Cultural Industries, a seminal text, which will be forty years since its publication in Spain, as one of the most significant milestones in the necessary holistic approach, from feminism and its different theoretical currents, to communication and culture.
Thus, new lines of reflection and research began to take shape, incorporating concerns about such fundamental questions as the relations between communication and power, both macro and micro. On labour relations and working conditions. On the processes and agents of decision-making around the message as a commodity but also as an ideological artefact. It is necessary to highlight the new perspectives on the interweaving of different oppressions and discriminations: gender, ethnicity, class, etc., which were also addressed early on in our field by Michèle Mattelart, whose pioneer and main exponent in the Anglo-Saxon world was Angela Davis. These theoretical positions would burst forth with force, especially in the 1990s, and would enrich not only the theoretical debate but also the field of study itself, shedding light on relations, dimensions and spaces that had been invisible in previous decades.
Gender discrimination in communication and culture has received considerable attention in recent years from international doctrine and emerging academic research. But these discriminations seem to be aggravated in the digital world, both in terms of training and in the STEM professions that directly affect the communicative and cultural creation of the future; moreover, there is an even tougher "glass ceiling" in managerial positions in companies focused on NICT, which has a particular impact on the role of women in the production and dissemination of symbolic goods.
Given the double face of communication and culture in our contemporary societies, these processes threaten to seriously damage the diversity of perspectives and sensibilities of the knowledge society and the talent and creativity in economic terms, to the extent that some governments and large technology companies have undertaken programmes and actions to alleviate their worst consequences.
The dossier thus aims to stimulate empirical research and public and private policy proposals in this field, and to give visibility to ongoing studies, encouraging debate in our society. In this context, the monograph brings together some analyses and reflections on the obvious deficits of women's participation as protagonists in the field of communication and culture, but also their still distorted presence as stereotyped objects in audiovisual representations.
