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"Design Squad" co-host on the underrepresentation of women

By Rain Noe - January 12, 2011

in design.edu

Inventor's Digest has an interview up with Judy Lee, a mechanical engineer and industrial designer for IDEO who also happens to co-host PBS' "Design Squad Nation" program. In addition to following Lee's career arc, the interview touches on a point that organizations like Femme Den fight to bring to the forefront: Why are women underrepresented in engineering (and by extension, industrial design)?

Lee suggests toy design itself may play a role:

For my generation, I think it had something to do with the things we liked to do and were encouraged to do growing up. If you look at all the toys that were available, most of them are gender specific.

Toys for boys included fake tools like plastic hammers and drills that encouraged building skills, while toys for girls included kitchen sets and dolls that encouraged nurturing skills. They were typically identified in 'appropriate' colors, where pastels and shades of pink were girlie, and primary colors (blue, green and red) were for boys.

While this is a generalization, I think industry had a large role influencing parents subconsciously as to what was appropriate for their kids to play with. This is still true today. Why do toys even need to be gender appropriate? Kids learn best through playing. Playing is the perfect chance for kids to experience first-hand what is happening and to analyze the world around them.

Check out the full interview here.

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Nessa

13 years ago

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Chris-
No one is PREVENTING women from entering design fields. the reason they are underrepresented, the reason that the majority of the "design superstars", in any design field, are predominantly white men, is probably due to many social factors. No one is saying that they are not talented!!!! What needs to happen is they (women and minorities) need to continue to be encouraged POST-college. They need to be given recognition. What we are seeing is that while there is about a 50/50 split between men and women in design schools, the percentage of women decreases in the field.
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Chris

13 years ago

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Under-representation? What, are people preventing women from being designers? If the work of "Mary" is better than the work of "Charles," Mary's work will be used, not Charles'. To use the work of the more talented person (Mary) is more expedient. To use the lesser work of Charles would be literally stupid. It's like saying 40% of the employees of a company MUST be black. Really? What if mostly white people are applying and blacks don't WANT that job? Well, too bad, that company gets sued by the ACLU. To complain that women are under-represented is to say that women are less talented and that their work can't speak for itself. It's offensive to women (or blacks or Asians or whites) to say that they need special help in order to advance.
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Cameron

13 years ago

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Women generally have different career values of primary importance than men. I don't know why they are under-represented in product design, but it is clear that in this free society women are choosing not to go into engineering because it is not what most women find fulfilling.

I don't think we need to be concerned that different fields have different gender biases. Those are generally based on individual choice and I think the thought of 'fixing' those ratios is somewhat ludicrous.
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