Gendered Design : An Interdisciplinary Framework

This book bridges both normative and interventional design processes, methodologies and products under ‘gendered design’ as an overarching conceptual framework, with the goal of igniting reflexivity, awareness and action among design researchers, practitioners and educators on how designed things do and can have an impact on gender issues.

Gendered Design: An Interdisciplinary Framework is concerned with the feminist question of how products, both digital and physical, are and can be gendered by design. It proposes “gendered design” as a conceptual framework for the use of design researchers, educators and practitioners to analyze, critically reflect on, challenge and transform the ways in which design processes and methodologies contribute to the prevalent gender power relations. Presenting a comprehensive review of the extant feminist work, this book distinguishes between the normative and interventional gendered design practices. It identifies the explicit and intentional as well as the unreflexively and ultimately careless practices, which lead to, respectively, gender-stereotypical and gender-blind products. This book stresses that the prevalence of such practices should not prevent us from exploring the interventional forms of gendered design. Drawing on four case studies, Gendered Design attests that, if products have such an important role in gender relations, then they can also be shaped in ways that advance gender equity in society by integrating gender-sensitive, gender-responsive, gender-inclusive, and gender-transformative considerations into product design processes and methodologies.