Gender perspective advances in the media: initiatives for its incorporation into the Spanish press

Abstract

Incorporating a gender perspective in the media entails implementing strategies to work with information in a democratic way. The mobilisation of Las Periodistas Paramos in Spain in 2018 influenced a change towards such a perspective, which is also one of the most relevant innovations identified in Spanish media. The purpose of this work is to draw, for the first time, a map of the initiatives adopted by the Spanish press to incorporate the gender perspective into its newsrooms. To do this, style guides and other initiatives aimed at providing guidance on the introduction of the gender dimension are examined, and semi-structured interviews are used to find out how four women journalists responsible for such an incorporation carry out their work. The results show a substantial, although also uneven, presence of initiatives in the 21 newspapers analysed. Most of the style guides –10 of them have one and nine of them have been accessed– are outdated, obsolete or being updated. Most also contain aspects related to the gender perspective, although they do not include this term explicitly and often do not adapt to today’s reality. In the newspapers that do not have a Style Guide or other types of measures, a sensitivity towards the subject is perceived. On the other hand, four newspapers have a gender editor whose main function is to ensure that the perspective is transversal and reaches all sections, genres and content. These professionals make a positive assessment of their still brief trajectory and agree that journalism has advanced considerably and done important pedagogical work in society in terms of gender, although it seems that this figure will remain necessary for quite some time.