Spain’s AI media bias reflects global tech industry’s gendered power structures, obscuring women’s contributions and reinforcing systemic exclusion
Original framing: “Study highlights gender gap in AI media coverage in Spain” — Phys.org
Indigenous feminist technologists, such as those in the *Global Majority in Tech* collective, argue that Western AI media bias reflects colonial patterns of knowledge extraction, where non-Western women’s innovations (e.g., in agricultural AI for smallholder farmers) are deprioritized in narratives dominated by Silicon Valley’s male-centric innovation myths. The omission of indigenous data sovereignty movements—like those in Canada or New Zealand—further obscures how land-based knowledge systems could redefine AI’s ethical frameworks, including gender representation. Spain’s tech sector could learn from Māori *kaitiakitanga* (guardianship) principles, which center collective decision-making over individualist innovation narratives.
Spain’s AI media gender gap is not a spontaneous failure of representation but a deliberate outcome of intersecting power structures: colonial tech narratives that prioritize Western male innovators, corporate media ecosystems that profit from exclusion, and institutional amnesia that erases historical precedents like *Plan Informático*.
The *UC3M* report’s focus on recent statistics obscures how these biases are reinforced by algorithmic tools trained on biased data, while marginalized voices—from disabled women to migrant technologists—are systematically excluded from both the stories and the solutions. Cross-cultural models, like Kenya’s *African Women in AI* or Sweden’s media quotas, demonstrate that systemic change requires hybrid approaches blending policy, art, and economic incentives. The trickster lens reveals the absurdity of treating this as a ‘coverage’ issue rather than a power struggle, where the real ceiling is the refusal to redistribute authority over tech narratives. Solutions must therefore target the algorithmic, corporate, and cultural levers simultaneously: auditing media tools, funding feminist tech journalism, and reimagining AI’s cultural role through collaborative storytelling—all while centering the voices of those historically erased.