Gender and Design

Der Text identifiziert ausgehend von derArbeit mit Studierenden im Rahmen des Designstudiums relevante Anwendungsbereiche für Designer*innen im Kontext Gender und Design und versucht eine Annäherung, einen Diskussionsstarter mit einer Gegenüberstellung von gendersensibler
und genderblinder/genderspezifisch kodierter Gestaltung.

The text identifies relevant areas of application for designers in the
context of gender and design, based on work with students in the course of
design studies. It also attempts at an approach, a discussion starter, with a
juxtaposition of gender-sensitive and gender-blind / gender-specific coded
design.

From the immediate postwar period to the mid-1960s, the kitchen environment represents a social and cultural topos in Italy; as such it is influenced by gender stereotypes and embodies reflections and research developed by contemporaneous architects and by the renewed, or new, furniture industry. In a landscape tinged with the adhesion to or re-elaboration of the models offered by the European rationalist kitchen or the United States typologies, select women architects and interior designers experiment with different approaches, which hint at a different spatial and existential concept of the kitchen. * * *  Dal dopoguerra alla prima metà degli anni Sessanta, in Italia l’ambiente della cucina rappresenta un topos sociale e culturale influenzato dagli stereotipi di genere, il cui progetto è frutto di riflessioni e ricerche degli architetti e della rinnovata, o nuova, industria del mobile. In un panorama venato dalla adesione o rielaborazione dei modelli di cucina razionalisti europei o delle tipologie statunitensi, alcune progettiste si cimentano in prove differenti, che adombrano una diversa concezione spaziale ed esistenziale della cucina. * * * 
http://www.palinsesti.net/index.php/Palinsesti/article/view/138

ABSTRACT Mass-produced consumer packages are
everyday objects that almost go unnoticed. However, by
claiming things such as the essence of femininity or
masculinity, they affect us and are co-creators of our
reality. Based on visual ethnography, this article traces
the representation of gender on mass-produced packaging
during a time when male privilege is being challenged
and female visual objectification is being
questioned. The chosen products all have an intimate
relationship with body care and the body’s functions.
On some of the packaging, the biological differences
between women and men are presented as scientific
facts. On other examples, such as perfume packaging,
gender is represented as decoupled from the body and
part of an enjoyable choice of identity, as multiple, fragmented,
and fluid. Such representations conceal power
differences by making gender into a matter of consumer
choice, while also illustrating the constantly changing
nature of gender. Gender and package design are
entangled processes that affect and change with
each other.

Por su relación con mi tesis de maestría Las situaciones diseñadas (disponible en https://utadeo.academia.edu/AlfredoGuti%C3%A9rrez) mi columna Quinceañera, que habría debido ser divulgada en marzo de 2011, y donde analizaba la portada de la edición 70 sobre las mujeres y lo femenino en el diseño, es acaso la más significativa de cuantas escribí a la fecha para la revista colombiana de diseño proyectodiseño. Puesto que hoy (abril de 2015), tras 49 meses, o cuatro años largos, continúo aguardando en vano la publicación de la postergada edición 71 que la incluía (suspendida entonces por inconvenientes de producción), anticipo su divulgación por mi cuenta.

Mimicking pornographic stereotypes of femininity, current trends in sex robotics reinforce out-of-date gender stereotypes to the extreme. Feminism has taken this as an invitation to reject the very idea of robot sex as a sexist expression of toxic masculinity. Both proponents and adversaries of sex robots, however, built their arguments on questionable ontological premises. Arguing from a new materialist, sex positive, queer perspective, the article proposes a realignment of sex robotics towards post gender forms and materialities. Liberating sex robots from the obligation to imitate the human body as faithfully as possible, may also serve as an antidote to the eeriness and revulsion many people experience when having to deal with humanoid – but not quite human – replicants.

The concept boat All Aboard was designed to meet women's expectations of leisure boats. A constellation of firms worked together to find solutions that could lead to business opportunities by challenging the implicit male norms of the leisure boat industry. This article examines the cultural notions of gender and equality that mattered in the process and explores the relationship between bodies, technologies, design, and gender using qualitative ethnographic methods. Based on queer theory, this article argues that ideas of the female body and the female relationship with boats played a significant role in this innovation process. Although invisible (and male) norms masked by so-called neutral designs and technologies were challenged, new norms of what women are like and what it means to be a woman were simultaneously created.

Petersson McIntyre, M.
(2015) ‘Queering all aboard: challenging the maleness of the leisure
boat industry’, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Vol. 24, No. 1,
pp.4–22.

With the introduction of the Internet as a communication medium, new forms of design practice have begun to come to the fore. However these practices often draw upon the well established canons of the design discipline. The case study of BEME.com, a commercial online portal design for female Internet users, explores the transition from the graphic design traditions associated with women’s magazines to the online design of commercial Internet portals for women. This paper addresses the relationship between design practice and the portrayal of gender in both mediums. Feminist critique of design practice has drawn attention to continuing problems women have as design practitioners and design consumers and a case study analysis of BEME.com offers an opportunity to highlight some of the issues such a critique raises. The paper draws on documents obtained from the commissioning publishing house and visual materials gathered from the online portal to substantiate the analysis.  Whilst located at a cross-road in design practice where design traditions for women’s magazines meet the emerging practice of online design, this paper argues that the case of BEME.com demonstrates that design traditions and particularly design for women and of gender, are all to easily transferred from one medium to another.

One goal of the GDS program is to support the emergence of a network of scholars engaged with exploring the field of Gendered Design (GD) and experimenting with more aware design practices. The GDS research teams are for sure members of this potential future and work-in-progress network, along with the GDS core team and experts
(gender, regional, and sector). With this in mind, a new set of activities to support the development of this network was designed and took the shape of LabTwo. LabTwo embraces topics of interest from the collective group of researchers and creates space for exchange,
discussion, and knowledge production around them. LabTwo | Session One, took place on June 25, 2021, on the first selected topic ‘The role of power in GD’. The session was designed and facilitated by us, Chiara Del Gaudio and Raquel Noronha.

Conventional design practices regard gender as a given precondition defined by femininity and masculinity. To shift these strategies to include non-heteronormative or queer users, queer theory served as a source of inspiration as well as user sensitive design techniques. As a result, a co-design workshop was developed and executed. Participants supported claims that gender scripts in designed artefacts uphold gender norms. The practice did not specify a definition of a queer design style. However, the co-design practice opened up the design process to non-normative gender scripts by unmasking binary gender dichotomies in industrial design.

El fútbol evoca al diseño. Sábado, 31 de julio de 2010, recapitulo la gesta de Colombia durante el V Mundial de fútbol sub20 femenino celebrado en Alemania. Clasificaron a semifinales el 24 de julio, en la ciudad de Bielefeld, venciendo 2 por 0 a Suecia. Espléndido juego. Goles de la santandereana Yoreli Rincón y la bogotana Tatiana Ariza. El jueves 29 de julio, en el mismo escenario las valientes ‘orquídeas’ caen 0 a 1 ante las ‘halconas’ nigerianas. Minuto uno: disparo remoto de la capitana rival Joy Jegede, aterriza en el área chica, salta sobre la portera Paula Forero, golpea el travesaño y cae a los pies de Ebere Orji que anota. A diferencia de los partidos iniciales ante Francia (1-1) y Alemania (1-3), los colombianos vimos en directo por las grandes cadenas, Caracol y RCN, esfumarse el sueño de alcanzar la final de un campeonato mundial FIFA; mas por breves días escribir la página máxima en la historia del fútbol colombiano estuvo por hacerse con pies de mujeres.

När det handlar om design har genusaspekter främst fokuserats på produkters semantik, deras symbolvärden eller på de stora dragen inom specifika designfält, eller de målgruppstankefigurer som dessa präglas av (Sparke, 1995; Ahl, Olsson & Kleberg, 2002; Helland, 1994; Attfield, 1989; Kirkham 1996). Vi har valt att fokusera på designprocessen, samt hur ett angreppssätt baserat på genus kan avtäcka och avslöja viktiga aspekter av denna process.

On 31st of August 2001, a UK women’s online portal (BEME.com) has been terminated, leaving behind three other UK competitors to fight over the niche market. BEME.com was published by IPC Media a global publisher with expertise in women’s periodicals. It was the dot.com answer to an online women’s magazine. Five years on, the other three online portals are still operational, selling the same gendered images to its female audience. As Ferguson (1983) ones observed ‘... plus ça change ... everything changes nothing changes’. (pp. 190)

Years of feminist research into women’s magazine publishing have exposed how deeply the commercial imperatives are implicated in gendered structures. On the other hand early studies of women’s Internet use focused primarily on raising awareness of a significant disparity between male users and female users online (Harcourt 1999). However, as Martinson and Schwartz (2002) point out, ‘[w]hile current numerical parity on the internet is one measure of progress, issues of gender equality are more complex than simple counts of who is logging on to the internet’ (p. 31). Building on the events of the past five years and the development of the web design industry in UK, this presentation questions the ability of designers to develop strategies to counter gender representations within the commercial women’s magazine publishing on the World Wide Web (WWW). Looking back on the case study of BEME.com what lessons can be learned about designers and their practices within the world of WWW that can illuminate the reasons why today’s women’s commercial online portals perpetuate the same gender stereotypes. Taking critical view of the design practice, this presentation offers insight into the systemic lack of interest on the part of designers working within industry that trades heavily in gender stereotypes, to problematise this process and their role within it.

In building the argument, a reference is made to the context within which the design team took on the BEME.com project. A review is taken of the role of designer and their influence on interpretation of the communicated meanings voiced by the client. Followed by a discussion of various approaches used by the team in dealing with gender norms. The data used in this presentation derives from a PhD research asserting the potential of online portal design to offer alternative ways of communicating to female users in such a way as to resist and combat the gendered status quo. The presentation draws on documents obtained from the commissioning publishing house and interviews with the design team to substantiate the analysis.

The paper culminates with a look into the future of web design for commercial women’s portals. In creating design outcomes for the WWW, today’s web designers cannot ignore the growing influence of information and communication technology as tool of cultural production. Therefore, taking into account the discussed designers’ tool-kit in dealing with gender norms a pressing issue arises as to how radical the design agenda can become whilst continuing to operate within a commercial context?


Bibliography:
Ferguson, M. (1983). Forever feminine: women's magazines and the cult of femininity. London, Heinemann.

Harcourt, W., Ed. (1999). women@internet; Creating New Cultures in Cyberspace. London, Zed Books Ltd.

Martinson, A. M., N. Schwartz, et al. (2002). "Women’s Experiences of Leisure: Implications for Design." New Media and Society 4(1): 29-49.

There is a tension between theory and practice present in many disciplines but not least in the design areas where academic research is still a relatively young activity. Design researchers and practitioners often work in isolation from each other, trapped or immersed in their own daily realities of academia or industry. Differences in language usage and hierarchies mean that mutual concerns cannot be understood as such and that fruitful communication is hindered. In recent years, many debates have taken place concerning the relationship between design research and design practice. The extent of interest is evident by the six year history of the Research into Practice conference in Hertfordshire, UK.

In our respective research and practice in the fields of fashion design/sustainability and online design/gender we have experienced how academia and industry are sometimes very far apart, but also how the personal and professional identities in an individual may be hard to reconcile. Thus, we have identified a need to create an unbiased or rather ”uncontaminated” platform for discussions of topics such as environmental issues or gender, which may typically create political tensions or instigate feelings of guilt. This paper proposes the use of the artefact as a tool that can bridge the gap between researcher and practitioner, and between the professional and personal self.

This chapter presents an investigation into the commercial WWW portal, “BEME.com,” as an example of gendered Web design targeting female users. It argues that Web designers need to be aware of processes implicated in such gendered outcomes. Thus, an analysis of the BEME.com design process is used to identify threats and opportunities in designing for female online users in order to formulate appropriate
design guidelines. The chapter outlines several underlying factors that illuminate these processes, and their social, cultural, and political origins. It is argued that the prevalence and accessibility of WWW makes it a powerful vehicle of change both within design practice and in terms of gender structures more widely. It is in this context that the author seeks to contribute to the existing research by offering
a feminist critique of Web design, arguing that Web designers have an opportunity and a responsibility to affect and effect changes to a gendered status quo.

Internet technology presented the women’s magazine industry with new opportunities and capacities for publication and user interaction. However, the case of BEME.com, a portal targeting female users, exemplifies the tendency - discussed in this chapter - for a commercial context not only to trade in and on gender stereotypes but also to rely on traditional formats rather than take up opportunities for novel conceptions of and interaction with, users. Contemporary design and Internet theory together with a feminist framework is drawn on to explore these issues. It is argued that although web designers might have been aware of the Internet potential to foster new forms of interactive spaces for female users, these advances did not fit within the business models supporting such commercial portals. That design might play with rather than trade in gender stereotypes, where notions of ‘becoming’ drive conceptions of gender and interaction, are suggested as alternative approaches.

Computerspil giver mange muligheder for læring og indlevelse, men alligevel ser man typisk i de store spil, at det normalt er de samme fortællinger der går igen og igen. Men som spilkunstneren Andrea Hasselager siger, så kan computerspil mange forskellige ting, som bl.a. rykker ved spørgsmål om køn. Hun har arbejdet på kryds og tværs af felterne imellem kunstspil, organisering, og aktivisme hvor hun bryder grænserne for hvordan leg og spil kan forstås og fortolkes på tværs af forskellige temaer som udfordrer spillere og iagttagere. Computerspil kan nemlig viderebringe mange forskellige typer oplevelser og Andreas virke er ét af mange eksempler på hvor eksperimenterende spil og arbejdet med dem kan være. Disse oplevelser og overvejelser kan med fordel inddrages i undervisningssammenhænge. 

http://issuu.com/dansklf/docs/dn4_2015_epages_web/44?e=0/31912860

In the language of fashion design, dressing up is typically portrayed as an aesthetic activity in which a woman can express her individuality. This belief stems from the emergence of the bourgeoisie, a moment when the aristocratic blood stopped being enough to define oneself identity. The dress became not only a sign of a particular social status but a technological dispositive used to define the gender boundaries. This paper exposes the interview with the German fashion designer Marion Muck, born and raised in the city of Cologne. Relaxed, easy going and talkative, Muck shared with the writers her experience as a fashion designer, from her beginnings until the steps into the fashion world, hopes and future plans. In addition, it exposes our analytical perspective regarding the strong relation between Marion Muck’s designs and gender.

Project and writing by Julia Mitchelmore, Wendy Chiu and Maria del Mar Agudelo.

Feminist critique of design practice has highlighted continuing problems women have as design practitioners and design consumers.  Therefore a case study analysis of BEME.com, a commercial online portal design for female Internet users, offers an opportunity to address some of the complexities such a critique illuminates. Notwithstanding that Internet technology and design offer new means of communicating with women, a feminist critique highlights that particularly within a commercial context there is an unwillingness within design practice to problematise its participation in the processes that embody gendered meanings.  Instead, gender is often used by design practitioners as part of their creative toolkit specifically when designing for female audiences. Therefore, the paper maps out ways in which design practitioners, whilst creating BEME.com, do not take into account the actual portal users but rather ‘design’ their female audience through reliance on gender as a tool of differentiation and definition.  The paper draws on documents obtained from the commissioning publishing house and interviews with the design team and online/publishing industry professionals to substantiate the analysis. The driving purpose is to draw attention to the fact that today’s design practitioners need to recognise the significance of questioning women’s participation in and consumption of, design practice.