Women in Industrial Design

My experience of ID education is that it is a real ‘sausage fest’- and by that I mean not just a lot more males than females in the classes, but some classes did become like locker-rooms, behaviour that was really ‘blokey’ and ‘laddish’. The flip side to this was that the women who did study tended to do really well because they wanted to be there and really put in the effort, plus had personalitiies where they didn’t put up with any sort of crap, or maybe they were used to those environments (had brothers maybe).

It’s better for research and problem solving to have a diverse and pluralistic group as possible, and I learnt more (especially those “I’d never thought of it that way” moments) from people with different points of view. JOHARI, you don’t know what you dont know.

Every year the local state branch of the D.I.A. holds a meet ‘n’ greet night between students and practioners, for ID, graphics, architecture and interiors. All the male ID students jaws hit the floor when they see all the women studying everything but ID. Interiors in particular seems to be the opposite of ID in makeup- they mostly seem to be very glamourous and good looking women.

My class at the University of Cincinnati must have been an anomaly with 50% women! Five years later I’d say 90% (of 20-ish) of us are still gainfully employed as “industrial designers” or in the greater product design world and the others are still doing something creative… but maybe left to be moms (also respectable, still seemingly our duty) or pursue other interests.

My .02…

“The Man” is still a tall, white dude that hires designers based on his “ideal designer”. This profile created in majority to history and gender roles - ultimately one of a male designer.

This stat is alarming and makes me think there’s a bigger conversation about diversity in the workplace that needs to be mentioned.

If you are in hiring power. Think beyond yourself, your skill set, your company’s current skill set and process and take chances.

This new designer may not like cars, may not use Adobe products or a 3D modeling software, have no previous professional experience or a conventional process…

But, they will either convince someone to give them a shot or they will figure it out alone. They will be tastemakers and visionaries. And they will inspire your bored, conventional designers surfing design blogs for years to come.

You want them on your team. And you don’t want them to become bored and uninspired.

Lastly, I know there are interesting things going on in high schools (i.e. http://www.pensole.com/) but it sounds like we need to do more. We all have that quintessential, in the nick of time, perhaps one degree too late story of when we first learned about ID. I would hope for improvement!?

Are you saying that there’s a slew of people (women?) out there without design education or experience that would still be more beneficial to the design process than a design graduate or professional (man or woman)? Where would these people come from? Unless you are talking about hiring people from related fields, i.e. fashion, textiles, interior, pottery, architecture etc…?

We had a bit of this at my previous placement, a design consultancy - most of the CMF team had a background in textiles, we had a fashionista bridging CMF and research, we had more women than men doing graphics, and we also had automotive, interior and of course industrial designers. Saying that though, there wasn’t a single woman dedicated to ID…

My course has about 30% women, it will be interesting to see what they end up doing once we graduate.

I’d be curious what the percentage of women that are in other facets of Design.

For example, User Experience Design and Interaction Design. Even Graphic and/or Brand Development within companies tend to be, from my observation, more balanced based on gender.

I would lean more towards what the mindset tends to be for Industrial Design vs. other niches under the umbrella of Design.

Industrial Design is much closer to engineering on the spectrum of design. I tend to find, that industrial design is closer to the quantitative side as opposed to, say, UX which tends to be more qualitative.

Using traditional gender assessment qualities as a guiding factor in this discussion, logic guides me to seeing this as making sense. ID will, in my opinion, not see a gender balance of better than 60/40 with 70/30 or less being more to what my gut tells me as being accurate.

This has nothing to do with a woman’s capability, but more to do with pure natural interest in what tasks are part of the ID process. I would posit that design roles that are more qualitative in nature will draw more women to it.

Something else to consider is that I believe were on the cusp of a significant cultural change. “The Man” is about to peter out. I tend to believe that my generation (I was born in '71) is exhausted by the boys club nature of the Baby Boomer and previous generations. This applies not only to gender issues, but racial, and other social faux pas of our previous generations.

As to why there are not a lot of women in ID, I won’t even hazard a guess. But I suspect it is a similar reason as to why there are not a lot of women in engineering. And a quick google search on that shows several papers willing to give an explanation.

As to why I am not hiring women, that one is simple. I just filled 3 positions of varying experience. Of the well over 100 resumes/portfolios I received, I’d say 10-15 were women. Of the 20ish people I interviewed, 2 were women. The odds are literally 1 in 10 a woman would be the best candidate.

Although our current department mix is better than that. It is currently approximately 30% women. Other departments are different. Accounting only has 1 man with about a dozen women. Marketing is about 50/50. Our factory floor is 60-70% women. Inside sales again about 50/50 but outside sales is mostly men.

Interesting question though. I hope my ramblings were useful.

This is actually a subject I have been thinking about quite recently concerning several of my previous co-ops . I have had the opportunity to work at two really great companies, and the first had absolutely no women in the design department (except for myself and the other female coop) while the second was split more 1/3 women to men.

I can say right out that while places were filled with awesome, really nice people, the atmosphere at each was completely different. While I was treated equally at both I felt much more comfortable at the second, due to the fact that I didnt feel as much the need to prove my abilities, and just generally didnt need to worry so much about gender norms. An example of this is if I baked cookies to bring to work. At the first coop I would worry that doing this would insert me into a gender stereotype and I wouldn’t be taken as seriously. At the second, It didn’t worry as much because it wasn’t something “the girl” did, it was just something that I did.

Again I will emphasize that nothing about the people I was working with was instigating these thoughts. They were all amazing people and I was treated perfectly fairly. I’m not even sure why it felt like a big deal at the time. I guess I’m just saying that maybe part of the reason women gravitate towards different fields later in their careers is because they simply want to be around more women in the workplace. And so it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.

Like the UC grad above my current class is split about 50/50. But going into the workplace it is much more likely that the percentage will shift to become more male heavy. But I do really think that in about 10 years it will even out. Haha I myself intend to hang on ID for as long as possible.

Oh! Also thanks for posting those links Yo, they’re wicked cool :slight_smile:

@hiower

I’ve had the opportunity to go to a fantastic, however, corporate minded undergrad (the University of Cincinnati), try 6 different companies/consultancies for internships, 2 years at a full time position before heading to a fine arts based design program at Cranbrook Academy of Art for two years where individual research, studio practice and personal point of view was held above all corporate agendas… and since graduating nearly to years ago, I’ve been at a large corporation near Portland.

From my years of experience in school and out, I’ve found that the majority of traditional design firms and corporations hire the same exact industrial designer over and over. They are hiring the same portfolio over and over. Same skill set, background, etc.

My experience abroad (I worked for a famous dutch designer for a summer) was quite different than my US experience. The studio was majority women and I’d venture to say that as incredibly talented as these women are, they would not be hired by traditional US based firms or corporations because they don’t have “that” portfolio.

(Also, if you’re working in Europe, why would you ever give up months of PTO and maternity leave for a couple weeks?)

At grad school, I was surrounded by extremely intelligent and inspiring individuals doing amazing work but like the women mentioned above, these colleagues will probably never get corporate type jobs because they are better building models by hand and not in 3D or sketching. They might be hired as shop hands but never the designers they have trained and worked to become. Their portfolios don’t include the quintessential post it note page, bold sketches or renderings where even the most mundane chair looks shiny enough to eat. And their work is beautiful in a different way, it’s mentioned in books, magazines, blogs… I would love to see what these designers, given an opportunity, would contribute to the corporate design world (firms/consultancies included).

It is after all Cincinnati’s enrollment model that "if you are smart enough to get into the program, you are capable of learning anything (no portfolio required) and I think that firms and corporations could be a little more open minded when looking at candidates.

@yo, thank you for your words. It’s definitely enlightening to hear corporations and firm would love to hire female designers, yourself included :sunglasses: . Browsing through Amina’s work well exemplifies her persistence in the field…something I really admire as a trait of character. Her work expands with so much variety and design interest. thanks for sending the link and also for sending this thread to your network of women in design. Looking forward to their thoughts!

@sarahsitz, Thanks for your thorough reply. It sounds like you’re enrolled in a Master’s program, judging by the fact that your classmates are from diverse backgrounds and yourself having another work experience. Very much enjoyed your reply!

@shuphrk88, I agree with your point of view that most girls may not have been exposed to activities and interests that boys had a chance to while growing up. It is still part of a social norm that influences ID in a certain way, and it will take few more decades to start seeing a big shift. Thanks for your input, I appreciate it.

@sanjyoo9, Ha! Funny how some things won’t seem to change. I was originally planned to major in Interior Design at Pratt but all that shifted when it was noted 90% of students were female sparkling from head to toe on a daily basis . It did seem like (then) Interior Design students were opposing mirrored reflection of ID students. I did have an older brother growing up and didn’t mind at all of locker room-esque ID shops, so perhaps that smeared a bit of influence…

@onepaisley, Wow, great to hear 90% graduating classmates from your school are still employed as IDers. I had some thoughts on this "tall, white, (maybe even good looking with a bit of charm) stereotyped male designer applicants…they certainly exist, and there are a good dominant number of them in the field. Charm and looks of an individual goes only so far in ID since most resumes are first filtered by software knowledge/skills/experience without a direct network contact… Thanks for the link to pensole! I didn’t know such program existed.

@jon_winebrenner, I do observe greater number of female UX designers working in the field, but it would be interesting to see what the actual number comes down to in other design fields as well. Perhaps Core77 can conduct such a survey. You’re right on the point about ID being closer to quantitative opposed to qualitative…although, some ID companies are heavily dependent on research and they rely on their industrial designers to conduct studies. Interesting view regarding Baby Boomers population and previous generations… On a side note, your presentation @NW IDSA Conference inspired me to(quote) “create the dots in design, with the ability to connect disparate piece in new creative ways”

@iab, thanks for your comment. I’ll do some research on papers that relate to engineering field…Wow, 1 in 10 women are only considered for the position?? That just made my jaw drop to the floor… your ramblings are more than helpful :slight_smile: Thank you for your input. I’m only inspired to work harder to be considered as the top 1% candidate among men & women applying to a prospective company.

@Holixx, I’m leaning heavily towards your comment about surrounding yourself with women is preferred in a workplace. I was the only female designer for two years until another female joined our team. I noticed now I no longer make frequent stops by the marketing group (all girls team) to chat about weekend plans and causally review restaurants and talk hair. It does relieve a bit of burden to not be the only one who doesn’t get all the Star Wars movie reference jokes…:wink:

Just thought I’d share an interesting contrast of article & an review on amazon.com

on FastCompany:
“Good products balance the needs of men and women for the benefit of both. They’re not male products masquerading as unisex or — worse — hiding under a coat of pink paint. They don’t alienate anyone with overt claims of being women-focused or women- friendly. They just are.”
[source: Forget “Shrink It and Pink It”: the Femme Den Unleashed]


on Amazon.com

A coworker of mine brought cupcakes to work in this carrier which she found in brown and it was just too cute to pass up, especially when I found it in PINK! ”
GardenofEdens | 1 reviewer made a similar statement

During my studies we were 15 male, 15 Female. Level of work def not leaning one way or the other. Some very fresh insights were shared to both sides of the genders. All in all a great environment.

As i now work work with athletic clothing, i am a minority by 1/5, in the design dept. Albeit, im the only one from an ID background. Several colleagues have spoken up, wanting more males in the product dept. I’d like that as well, but for selfish reasons.

There’s a 50/50 split among the industrial designers at my company (but there’s only four of us and they just hired us two women this year, so we may not be a good sample).

I think it’s mostly personality, and ID people have more of a tough “manly” personality than other design fields. From what I’ve experienced in school and in the real world, successful female industrial designers seem to be more of the “tomboy” type who aren’t afraid to get dirty in a machine shop making prototypes who have a tough outer shell holding their ground defending their design decisions and remaining composed and open to criticism when their designs get torn to shreds in critiques. This type is a minority of women in general, and then you take a fraction of that minority that decides to go into ID and that’s why there are fewer women in ID, in my opinion.

I was going to go further in my original reply to comment on this. The grey area of this discussion is that Industrial Design becoming a remix. I am seeing ID firms taking on more strategy design processes as well as UX firms taking on more ID processes. The “traditional” ID firm is kinda going the way of the Dodo. Someone with an ID degree can become a model maker, CAD jockey, render monkey, brand strategist, UX Designer, entrepreneur, … the list is pretty endless. It speaks a bit to the Boomer comment also, in that good work is what will be the discussion in the future, not gender or race or [insert bias here].

Cool. I am glad it spoke to you in some manner.

I just want to be perfectly clear as my post was likely poorly written. Of all the candidates, only 1 in 10 were women (purely based on their names). Same with the people I interviewed, 1 in 10 were women.

To be fair, of all the resumes we received, only 1 in 10 men were considered for the positions too. I can’t interview everyone who sends me a resume. I think that is pretty typical in that only about 10% of the people responding to an ad actually fit the description in the ad.

Good luck with your career.

No problem. A few other women in industrial design whose work I really admire.

Kimberly Wu: wish I was this good!
http://www.notcot.com/archives/2008/09/kimberly-wus-jo.php
http://www.kwudesign.com
kimjoy.jpg
Nancy Wu, Kimberly’s sister:

Amy Arandia:
http://www.coroflot.com/amyarandia

Thank you! I’m actually in undergrad, but I talk to our grad students daily. As for diversity of students, my university (Auburn) is a state school with a rather decent engineering college, so many non-engineering majors have former engineering students in them.
Myself, however, I am a 20-something married adult who went back to school after working in the “real world” for several years. I’ve had several people confuse me with being a graduate student :wink:

I enjoy feminist studies and writing, and when I saw this topic, I knew it would be fascinating to hear other people’s thoughts on the subject. Honestly, thank you for posting it!

Yo – Thank you so much for linking to Kimberly Wu’s work! Honestly, I am not interested in cars really at all (which is crazy for this field), but those are just lovely. Nancy Wu and Amy Arandia’s as well, thank you, I am adding these to my bookmarks of designers :slight_smile:

While it would be nice to speak only to good work in all fields, unintentional/institutionalized discrimination is kind of norm.
Years of telling children that it’s good to be “colorblind” has had more ill effects than good. I would gander that the same applies to gender, as well. Some degree of discussion about gender and race and class are necessary, if we want to be inclusive and sensitive to the wider world around us.

This could very quickly turn this into a different conversation than originally intended…I’ll try to keep it in context…

We disagree here…well, maybe. The issue for me is typically behavioral (cultural) vs. racial (skin color/gender, etc.). There are plenty of white dudes that are all “gangsta” as much as any other skin color. It is the behavior of the gangsta mentality that I believe is what should be discussed, not whether they have a certain skin color.

Similar to this conversation, I see a man and woman walking through the door should be judged on their behavior/skills not the orientation of their dangly bits.

Now, there is the whole issue of gender roles in society. From the 60’s on, women have been asking for “equality” in the work place. Equal pay, equal opportunity to rise to the top of the food chain, etc. But they also want months (year long) maternity, and flex time to be able to take care of kids, etc. The wants and realities don’t jive. I fall under the opinion that having children is a personal choice and not one that is the responsibility of an employer to bear. If you disappear for a year and someone comes in that is better and faster than you…is that the employer’s fault? I know…controversial, but something that needs to be discussed far more.

In the context of this discussion, a part of it that isn’t discussed is that there’s a LOT of research out there that shows that women are far more competitive when it comes to other women than anyone wants to admit. Studies have shown that women will be inclined to stake claim to their corporate territory and are more likely to discourage other female hires into potentially competitive roles.

Also, consider it from the other angle. The boss (male) needs to hire for a role of someone that has to be working side to side with him for 40 hours+ a week. The top candidate is a VERY talented female…she also happens to be VERY attractive. I can promise you, more times than not, the man will second guess this hire because he knows the kind of grief he’s going to get at home from his wife.

This discussion is a sociological onion.

Although I haven’t seen as many females as males in the workplaces I’ve been, I think managers may see females as an opportunity to provide additional perspectives to their design group. One example is the consultancy Smart Design. They have formed the group Femme Den, which focuses on the female consumer. To no one’s surprise, there are a lot of female consumers.

When I would help the freshman 3D labs I would listen to the teacher ask what major they wanted to go into. Overall, many people didn’t know what industrial design was (not surprising) and out of those, most girls were saying they might go into graphic design. I wonder if there are a large group of females, who go into Art & Design school already with a mind set on other arts & design. With portfolios and majors being competitive, they put a ton of effort into these fields and may miss on the opportunity of learning more about industrial design. These are just some thoughts I have wondered based off of my own school experience.

My class graduated in 2011 with 50/50 gender ratio. Since then 8 females and 6 males have found jobs as industrial designers in either a corporation or consultancy. 3 females are freelancing in various types of design work. Other classmates have found jobs in other design fields, the arts or other fields of interest.

We have been discussing females in corporations and consultancies but what about females who are freelancing. How many females are working as freelancers in industrial design?

Adding to the yo’s list of superb female designers: Eva Zeisel,

Hella Jongerius:

Good call, Eva Zeisel, how could I miss her!

I do think it is important to have role models out there. In recent years I think we have downplayed role models culturally due to a little bit of cynicism out there. I do think they are important for kids and teens, and even us older types to point the way like a beacon of possibility.

There are lots of different types of male designer role models, from corporate leaders like Dieter Rams (Braun), Jay Mays (VW nor Ford), John Hoke (Nike), Tinker Hatfield (Nike), and Eliot Noyes (IBM), Jonathan Ive (Apple) and Peter Schreyer (Audi now Kia) to the founders of consulting groups like Hartmut Esslinger (frog), Gianfranco Zaccai (Continuum), Loewy, Teague, Dreyfus, Giorgetto Giugiaro (ItalDesign), to the international stars like Stark, Rashid, Newson, to the crop of relatively younger designer like Scott Wilson and Yves Behar… plus all of the more boutique designer… anyway you get the idea.

My point is that I hope there are some in this generation of female industrial designers with en eye on working hard enough to become a role model for others. I think there already are in research, interaction, and strategy, and it would be fantastic to have more in product design.