As I look around my design classrooms, I notice that there are more females than males. I take interest in this observation when I realize that the majority of famous designers’ names I know are males. I find this observation also holds true with fine art.
What’s up with the gender inequalities? I am not bothered by the unbalanced numbers and I am not a fire-breathing feminist, but I am curious. What causes the shifts throughout the years? Interestingly enough, my “design hero” is actually a “heroine.” And I am definitely not a “girlie girl” (although my design heroine is).
How much of contemporary design is geared toward a certain gender? How much is androgynous? How much of it is sterile?
We all know that we must design for an audience. If the audience were all females, would a design with feminine tendencies and tones be more successful than a strong design with elements that could be considered “sexless”? If you were to design something for an audience you know to be strictly females, is it possible to produce a design that does not cater to females in some way, shape, or form?
When designing for an audience, how much is that audience reflected by a design that is considered successful?
3 Comments
Emily, your article sparked good conversation in class this week. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with the group. I may need to write a piece on the Old Spice commercial that was brought up during our discussion!
I’ve also been curious of shift in sexes, I think women usually are stifled by their career, other life goals, and really because you still gotta act like a man to get the same respect as one. Until more get to higher positions as women (and not as male wannabees) there will continue to be this shift. Good discussion!
More and more guys start doing what women were doing at home. In Italy, they passed a law that allows men to take paternity leave. The mother and the father can share the leave, so that both can keep up with the newborn. I don’t know if this would matter in our field, since many of us will work on their own, or as contractor. Although I want to stress the fact that “women STILL have to do this twice as good to be consider half as good as men.” Women will get higher positions, but that does not mean that they will be considered AS GOOD. Nice post.
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