Women and new media
09
Mar
The women’s day was yesterday, the prospect of a non-sexist society is very distant, even in European countries I contacted with sadness that sexism is still
a general culture, for example, harassment in France has high rates and in Portugal there are recent cases , where even a Supreme Court judge expressed his machismo in a case of domestic violence that he judged.
Wikipedia is the 5th.
The most accessed site in the world, it has more than 6 million entries, and despite having problems with editing and corruption in its entries, which is treated but can go online and cause confusion, its importance is undeniable, and denying it is not living the present reality.
New media is no different, Wikipedia the 5th. most read site in the world, it has recently been reported that the majority of women influential in scientific investigations are ignored by the site.
The article written by James Vicent in August 2018 in The Verge Magazine, says that 82% of the biographies are written about men, cites the example of Teresa Woodruff, a scientist who had no entry on Wikipedia (now has), and was named one of the most influential people in investigations and Artificial Intelligence by Time magazine in 2013.
Another influential researcher cited is Jessica Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London who wrote Pineau’s new entry, a system called QuickSilver, and spoke about Wikipedia:
“… it is incredibly biased and the under-representation of women in science is particularly bad”.
The article focused on AI research and also cited robotics researcher Joële Pineau.
However, new media have given women power and a voice too, it is undeniable that a number of excluded social groups, cultures almost disappeared, and many minorities now have a voice thanks to new media.
In social media media, facebook and instagram, there are countless cases of exposure of sexist images and content, which are not always denounced and punished for offensive practices
