Cecilia Castaño graduated in Political Science from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in 1974 and received her doctorate in 1983 with the thesis La Industria del Automóvil en España: Efectos de los procesos de cambio tecnológico sobre las condiciones del mercado de trabajo (The Automobile Industry in Spain: Effects of the Processes of Technological Change on the Conditions of the Labor Market).

[2] In 1975, she began her teaching career at the UCM's Faculty of Political Science and Sociology; in 1976, she became part of the Department of Economic Structure, which she has been a professor of since 1992.

From 1987 to 1988 she collaborated with the Organization and Management of Innovation (OGEIN) Program of the Public Company Foundation of the National Institute of Industry.

From 2003 to 2008 she was member of the Scientific Committee of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Open University of Catalonia, directed by Manuel Castells.

Internet y la trama de nuestra vida (Women and Information Technologies: Internet and the Fabric of Our Lives), a book in which she analyzes to what extent and by what means information technologies contribute to the full incorporation of women in economic and social activity and its effects, raising the new forms of gender inequality produced by digital illiteracy.

[6] Castaño also leads UCM's e-Equality Observatory, which since 2006 has been studying the situation of the incorporation of women into the Internet in Spain and Europe.