Gender Inequality in Design
Today in our lecture, was the mention of the gender inequality within the design industry. Something I found extremely interesting. At first, I suppose my ignorance drew me to thinking that this can’t be right. I have a 50/50 split in gender of design teachers, and every one of my classes is female dominant, in fact, sometimes I’m the only male in the room. However when talking about Bauhaus and the gender inequality there, and the fact that many highly successful designers are male, everything became a little more clear.
In society, we have this “new age” idea that women can be anything. That they should be allowed to be whatever and whoever they want to be. And in my mind, that’s 100% correct. If you want to be the prime minster, feel free. If you want to be a stay at home Mum, feel free. If you want to be CEO, feel free. If you want to be an escort, make sure you’re well paid ;) My point is, society at this current stage, puts into the minds of young women that they can be anything. And they’re told to idolise the women who have been successful. However, in practise, I don’t believe this is correct. This isn’t realistic. I truly wish it was. But for some reason, our society is fine with women working behind a desk, but not fine with them going any further. And it’s quite disgusting actually. We say “yes! go women! Be successful!” but then we don’t let them. It’s quite strange.
Over the time frame of this semester, I’ve been silently taking note of all the conversations had in class, and who is the leader in them, who is the most dominant person. I mentioned it to a few people in the first week of class actually, and I think that the realistic answer of who dominates the conversations in class, isn’t that surprising. Think about it. We have 2 lecturers, and who does the majority of the talking in class? Andy. Or if we’re tasked with starting a group activity, I’ve physically seen men become the predominant talkers. Who leads the group activities? Think back to all of the group activities we’ve had. Who dominated? In Week 1, we took things out of our pockets and made a typeface. On our table, Sam lead the group. In any class topics with David, I’m usually the one questioning things and putting my opinion across. If we’re ever talking about a theoretical topic, Atticus is always there adding in a view point. If there’s ever a discussion had in a lecture, Tristan seems to always have a great viewpoint on things. Is this subconscious or is it somewhat biological? I don’t know. Is it a mans physical strength and deep voice that asserts dominance? I’m not too sure. But I just found it curious that as a class, we were talking about the outside world as if was disgusting and should change, but I don’t think we are much different at all.
During a discussion about gender inequality in design, in a room dominated by women, very very few (like, 2) actually voiced an opinion. 2 women that seemed like they knew what they were talking about and had definitely had discussions about feminism in the past. But why were so many women sat back and not talking? I don’t know. For once in my life, I didn’t join in on the discussion, but it was interesting to sit back and listen.
I do think that Atticus had a very good theory. What if we deleted the gender walls, and paid less attention to biological sense, and introduced everyone as a person and not as a penis or vagina? What if we stopped dividing everyone, and brought everyone together as the human race, by not labelling everyone and making everyone tick a “male” or “female” box. Why are we so dependant on gender? Although it’s somewhat unrealistic for this modern day and age, it’s a good question. What if?
Perhaps I should start wearing high heels to Uni in protest. Hm.
