I’ve worked Industrial Design since 1986 and this topic is one of the most disappointing to me. I’ve never worked with any women designer’s. Of several ID consulting companies that I have been involved with in Canada, America and UK, again no women industrial designers. My career has been a majority in industrial product development, I’ve never worked on a commercial retail end product: i.e. all medical, scientific, automotive, sports and other equipment, and I learned to assume that this specificity is male dominated. It’s a false premise as the end product was usually most used by female lab technician’s.
I routinely visit graduation shows across this country and have noticed a fair female representation, still a minority. Indeed most of their thesis projects do strike me as feminine and I’m ambivalent whether this is positive or negative. To date the two most impressive graduate projects I’ve reviewed were designed by women: a real time energy usage colour-glow change light, the thing was just beautiful, and a visual information 3D representation system of massive data sets via stereolithograph prints: hold your representational data set in your hand.
When I was in school the topic of industrial design in the movies came up. The class could name three movies with industrial designers in them, all three female. We joked it appeared the male only class was getting into a female dominated profession. I don’t remember the movies,keep in mind this is the mid-1980’s, but one we discussed had a glasses like feedback device feeding a Schwarzenegger Total Recall like story line, with an uber stylish woman called in to design the wearable feedback device. Mindstorm, Brainstorm, something like that.
I assume the requirement to make models and use power tool shop equipment is a strong deterrent in choosing study majors. I had first hand experience with similar: I was anti-photography due to other family members being photo super geeks. It was a requirement for ID studio presentations so I took a photography elective and was the only male in a class of 32 female fashion design students. A real different experience being the visible minority, and then there was the darkroom work! Aye caramba the embarrassment swishing film development reels back and forth at chest height in a crowded blacked out room.
I assume some ID schools co-located with mechanical engineering schools is also a strong deterrent, as those are very male dominated.
I think overall this is a time issue, time passage will organically allow more women entry and success into the industrial design discipline. But I suspect it will be a microcosm of the larger working world: the practice of industrial design is becoming more specialty discipline segmented and certain segments will develop gender balance and some gender dominance.
So, if it matters, I think the industrial design world of all sub-disciplines desperately requires more women, and if one had turned up at an interview I was conducting she would receive a fair assessment.