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Is design still a boy's club?

By Niti Bhan - October 4, 2008

in Object Culture

Style maven Alice Rawsthorne asks in the New York Times style magazine whether design is still a boy's club and do women face the challenge of prejudice and misperception in the field? Personal experience seems to belie the contention, but that might just be me. What do you all think? Here are some snippets to get you thinking...

Richard Grefe, the association's executive director, says he believes women prefer to work with hand-picked teams in smaller studios for carefully chosen clients. Jongerius's experience of teaching in her native Netherlands supports this.
"To make it to the top, you need to be outspoken, self-confident and entrepreneurial, apart from having design talent," she says. "I have taught many talented young women and tried like hell to push them, but most were too shy, emotional, cautious and lacked self-confidence and ambition."
In other words, women are bedeviled by the same entitlement issues in design as in other professions and, it seems, by similar misperceptions. "When I work with manufacturers and issues arise around construction or mechanical systems, the questioning faces often turn to my male partners," says the furniture designer Rosanne Somerson. "They suggest that I could answer better - I have terrific colleagues - but even then, there are times when my answers are ignored and the question is reiterated to them." It isn't just men who are guilty of this. "If a prospective client calls Pentagram and doesn't ask for a partner by name, I see them thinking, Why did I get the woman? when I walk in," Scher says. "Even the women do it."

via RISD blog

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Ann Thorpe

16 years ago

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Everything said above is echoed in architecture. I've blogged about this in terms of "design activism" at http://designactivism.net/archives/73.

Zaha Hadid is not the only woman architect but, according to the AIA (links on my blog) in 2006 although nearly half of all architecture students are women, they make up only about 26% of all architectural staffs and only 13% of all licensed architects. AIA stats over time show very gradual improvement, however. I wasn't able to find any statistics for other forms of design, but I'm interested if anyone knows of any.

As for minority groups. People of color make up 16% of all architectural staffs, although only 1.5% of licensed architects (about 1600 people) are African American and there are no statistics on Hispanic architects (America's fastest growing group). Black women make up only 0.2% of licensed architects, according to Architect magazine, although they make up 2% of attorneys.

Women interviewed in the Arch. Record article express exactly the kind of experiences as those mentioned above...

Yet it seems "unfashionable" to comment on this, let alone make an issue of it. How many conferences on sustainable design do I attend where the only people on the main stage are older white men? A lot! How many women are now qualified to play those main stage roles? A lot.

(sorry I couldn't get line breaks in this comment...)
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kattyface

16 years ago

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Absolutely. I have been in the design industry for two years now and when meeting clients for the first time, I have been "overlooked" in the initial meet-and-greet handshake line by male clients. I have also had similar experiences to Rosanne Somerson, where my expertise or opinion has been blatantly overshadowed by my gender. Please, do not get me started on wage biases.
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tarynpaper

16 years ago

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I definitely still feel the boys club tension when I go on interviews, especially if its a job that requires some physical work like exhibit or set design. I've been very adamant about not indicating my gender on job apps and I've scored more interviews. The truth is is that if you are confident, ballsy and you don't let people walk all over you, you will succeed.
and as for the pay difference between men and women, i hate to sound off politically but that's one of the major reasons I'm voting for Obama. Hopefully once he fixes that, it will never be an issue again. It should have never been to begin with.
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niti

16 years ago

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hmm seems to me then that i may have taken ric grefe's 'way out' - that of working as an independent and thus not facing the challenges you are pointing out, or is it generational? i.e. what about teams and studios with men in their twenties and thirties, is it still the same?
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fq34

16 years ago

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Unfortunately it still is . . .I ran across this the other day. Look at all of our "design heroes" there are old white men.
http://www.idsa.org/whatsnew/sections/dh/activities.html
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sb

16 years ago

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Unfortunately I think this is part of the reason that women aren't paid as much as men...
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