“jueza”, “female judge” is “ the judge’s wife” according to the RAE: an association denounces this (eldiario.es9-X-16).

“jueza”; “female judge” judge’s wife” ... The judges rebel against the RAE (vozpopuli.com, 11-X-16).

Judges seek to correct the meaning of the word jueza (female judge) in the RAE (Libertaddigital.com, 9-X-16).

This demand showed a bias in the academic dictionary pointed out by, among others, Cabeza Pereiro and Rodríguez Barcia (2013):

[...] one of the most interesting aspects of the academic repertoire is the presence of the obsolete definition” X(male)’s wife” in a multitude of expressions specific to gender and in other expressions with motions -entries that distinguish inflections of grammatical gender based on the referent’s sex-which normally refer to professions and positions traditionally held by men.

Of course, the opposite does not happen, that is, in no case will we find “Y(female)’s husband” when defining the masculine form of a profession or position that refers to professional activities traditionally performed by women (for example, midwife).

3.2. Social networks as the main channel for current demands

In recent years, social networks have become the main platform to denounce or make demands to the academic dictionary, which pass from there to the traditional media, and are then disseminated as news. Therefore, the so-called “raids” of the “Golondrinas de la RAE”, (“Swallows of the RAE”) are of great interest, an informative campaign of equality specialists carried out from 2012 through social networks, whose purpose was to make the “sexism” of the Academy visible. A team of volunteers joined the promoters, Mary Martin and Carlos de la Fe, gathering material over twelve months, analysing the dictionary, the CORPE and the activities of the Royal Academy of Language. Twice a year (in April and September), the sexist aspects they had found were diffused on social networks and were sent to the institution9.

The press reported the raids of this movement, which, in the article entitled “Feminist swallows invade the RAE” (eldiario.es, 25-IV-16), was considered a kind of “escrache”, (public harassment) towards the Academy. It is not really known if it was these or other campaigns which influenced the latest changes carried out in some areas considered discriminatory for women, but the truth is that the DLE, as we shall see, changed them after the media denouncements, and so manifested Mary Martin in her interview:

During any of the six raids did the RAE pay any attention to them? “In the first raid it just so happened that their web page was down after announcing it for a while on the social media”, she comments. “If we look now the words which were asked about in the first raids, we note that some definitions have been changed over these years” (eldiario.es, 25-IV-16).

Since 2017 there have been feminist demands made to the dictionary through change.org a social pressure platform, which although it did not replace popular legislative initiatives (since their petitions have no legal validity), when the number of petitions was very high or when the petition went viral through other social networks, it became news in the traditional media. Thus, in March 2017, the press reported the petition (#Yonosoyelsexodébil) (#Iamnottheweakersex),