Presence and representation of female scientists in the Spanish press

Introduction: This R&D project is based on the hypothesis that female scientists are invisible in the Spanish media. Objectives and methods: To test this hypothesis and to examine the image of female scientists offered by the Spanish press, this study analyses the science news disseminated by the five major general-interest paid-for newspapers during six non-consecutive months. Conclusions: The results reveal that these newspapers only dedicate 2.6% of their pages to science news and that only 14.3% of these news stories focus on female scientists, while the great majority of news, 70.7%, focuses on male scientists and the rest, 15%, have both male and female scientists as protagonists. Science news stories that focus on female scientists describe the research studies of these women in a dispassionate manner, without giving them a protagonist role, and without using evaluative adjectives to describe them. Thus, there is a significant level of inequality in the informative treatment given to male and female scientists in the Spanish press.