Montserrat Boix Piqué is a Spanish journalist, considered among the most influential women in her country. In early 2000, she created and developed the concepts of social cyberfeminism, and a year later those of feminist hacktivism. Another of her main areas of work is gender violence and communication. She has also stood out as a defender of the right to communication and citizenship rights for women. Since 1986, she has been a journalist for the Information Services of Televisión Española, in the international section.
Biography and career
Montserrat Boix holds a licentiate in Information Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In the early 1980s she began her professional career at in Barcelona. She later moved to Madrid to join the programEncarna de noche, directed by Encarna Sánchez on COPE Madrid. In 1983 she worked on the production of TV3's year-end special directed by Abili Roma. In 1986 she joined TVE's information services, specializing in foreign policy issues and the Arab world, Maghreb, Sahel, and Islamic movements, and jihadist terrorism. She was a special correspondent in Algeria in the early 1990s, covering information about massacres by the GIA and the country's civil war, in Sahrawi refugee camps, Morocco, Egypt, Afghanistan, Guatemala, and Bangladesh. In addition to the practice of journalism, she is a professor in Master's programs on equality, technology, communication, and development with a gender perspective at various universities, including the International University of Andalucía and the University of the Basque Country. She researches, in turn, how technologies serve as a tool for a new, more immediate, global, and democratized journalism. She works transversally on gender perspective and has received several awards for her work on more egalitarian journalism, among them the Recognition Award for most outstanding journalistic work in the eradication of gender violence granted by the General Council of the Judiciary's Observatory Against Domestic and Gender Violence, the for her effort and perseverance in making Mujeres en Red one of the media of reference in the defense of women's rights, and the Non-Sexist Communication Award from the Association of Women Journalists of Catalonia.
Social cyberfeminism
In 2002, Boix published "Los géneros de la red: los ciberfeminismos" with feminist philosopher Ana de Miguel in the book The role of humanity in the information age. A Latin Perspective, published by the University of Chile. This was the first work to articulate the concept of "social cyberfeminism". In November 2006, in the publication Labrys no. 10, she poses the concept of feminist hacktivism in the essay "Hackeando el patriarcado: La lucha contra la violencia hacia las mujeres como nexo. Filosofía y práctica de Mujeres en Red desde el ciberfeminismo socia".
''Mujeres en Red''
In 1996, Montserrat Boix created Mujeres en Red, a feminist periodical.
Awards and recognitions
2000: AMECO Communication Award
2001:, given by the PSOE's Secretary of Equality
2005: Recognition Award for journalistic work distinguished by the eradication of gender violence, given by the General Council of the Judiciary's Observatory Against Domestic Violence
2009: for her effort and perseverance in making Mujeres en Red one of the media of reference in the defense of women's rights
2011: 7th Isonomía Award against gender violence, Isonomía Foundation/Jaume I University
2015: Non-Sexist Communication Award, Association of Women Journalists of Catalonia
2016: Chosen by Mujer Hoy magazine as one of "Spain's 100 Most Influential Women"
2016, 2017: Included on the newspaper El Mundos list of Spain's 500 most influential women
2017: 10th Creating Spaces of Equality Award in the Communication category, given by the Women's Council of the Municipality of Madrid
