The main objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of gender in adopting and using new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Spain. It is widely accepted that men tend to be the first to use new technologies and to gain significant benefits from doing so, both at home and work. However, further research on gender and new technologies, such as ICTs, is still needed in order to better understand differences between men and women. On the one hand we show that percentage of ICTs users is higher among men. On the other hand, our results confirm that women also present lower frequency of ICTs use. We examine how the differences in adoption and use of ICTs are moderated by cultural and socioeconomic aspects. Differences appear mainly in the lower levels of education and in the rural area. Therefore, it highlights the necessity of taking into account those aspects to remove the gender digital divide totally. We also underline the importance of changes in gender roles and the increase of the participation of women in the Spanish labour force.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the contribution of women to rural development through cooperativism. To this end, we study the development of a group of cooperatives characterized by their female profile. The data are obtained from interviews with women who assume a key role on the selected entities, all located in the province of Teruel. The aim is to obtain information, from a historical perspective, of the evolution and perception of women about their future just at the time identified as the beginning of the economic crisis. The objective of this research is to examine whether cooperatives are a development tool that could prevent rural environments depopulation, encourage progress through female employment and support sustainability in deprived areas.

El enfoque de enseñanza-aprendizaje impulsado desde el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) incorpora una nueva forma de concebir la educación universitaria, donde el alumnado asume un papel principal en su aprendizaje. A su vez, implica una revalorización de la tarea docente y de la acción tutorial para reforzar el proceso formativo y el desarrollo integral de los alumnos y alumnas universitarios/as. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo conocer la opinión del alumnado acerca de los elementos relevantes en el uso de las tutorías académicas con el fin de identificar sus necesidades y mejorar la acción tutorial. En el diseño del estudio se adopta un enfoque descriptivo a partir de un cuestionario dirigido a estudiantes universitarios, que incluye preguntas relativas a su comportamiento y actitud personalante las tutorías, a la eficacia de las mismas, a su grado de utilización, y a la comunicación y relación establecida con el profesorado en dicho proceso. Los resultados, obtenidos a partir de una muestra de 322 estudiantes del campus de Teruel de la Universidad de Zaragoza, muestran cuatro aspectos relacionados con la autoconfianza del alumnado, la utilidad percibida, la motivación personal y el ahorro económico y/o de tiempo que supone el uso de las tutorías académicas. Si bien el grado de utilización de las mismas resulta moderado, es preciso destacar el valor que el alumnado otorga a la acción tutorial como estímulo para afrontar el trabajo requerido para superar la materia, así como para optimizar su tiempo de estudio. The teaching-learning process promoted by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) calls for a new approach in which the student is the main actor of his/her learning. This implies an increase in the value of the teaching task, in general, and tutoring in particular. Tutoring reinforces the training process and the integral development of students. The main objective of this study is to examine the opinion of university students about the use of academic tutoring in order to identify their needs and improve tutorial action. In the design of the study, the students were given a questionnaire to survey their personal attitudes and behavior toward tutorials, the extent to which they used tutorials and their effectiveness, and the level of communication and the relationship established with the teacher in the tutorials. The results, obtained from a sample of 322 students at the University of Zaragoza, Campus of Teruel, reveal four key points related to students’ self-confidence, perceived utility of the use of tutorials, personal motivation and financial and/or time cost (saving) that the students gain by attending tutorials. Although university students make only moderate use of tutorials, they emphasize the value of the tutorials as a stimulus to face the work required to pass a subject, as well as to optimize their study time.

This article studies the determining factors of gender composition of the boards of large Spanish companies and presents a method to predict it. For this purpose, a multivariate analysis is run to identify the differences in the characteristics between firms without female directors and firms with two or more female directors or one female director if she is the chief executive officer (CEO) or chair. This research analyzes women's participation on Spanish boards in a period prior to the introduction of voluntary measures to boost female participation, so its results are not influenced by that development.