Why feminist design
Sometimes we (at Social Good Outpost) are asked, in a friendly way, ‘what is feminist design?’. This is the start of why I feel it is important:
If we look, as an example, at topics such as design for future cities, there’s often a strong element of technology and intensification of space. Sometimes there’s an emphasis on creating spaces that are friendlier, and spaces that bring nature into the city. Sometimes, there’s mention of safer spaces for women. Most cities have been designed by men, for needs that were obvious to men. And most cities were designed, or sprung up, a while ago — sometimes hundreds of years ago. Melbourne, for instance, was deliberately designed to minimise areas in which the population could gather and threaten the fragile far-from-England authority. So, Melbourne was without a town square or other welcoming large spaces for people to gather and build communities, culture or daily rituals in — or to protest.
Following the city design line of thought, another common design feature throughout cities is spikes, or hostile design. Seen on fences, floors, window-sills that would otherwise be at sitting height; metal dividers on benches or garden edges that prevent lying down, passive-aggressive opera music played at bank ATMs… these are all deliberate design features to exclude people from these areas — and most pointedly, to exclude people without homes who are already marginalised and don’t have other spaces to go.
Cities, and many other things including the internet, social media platforms, the institution of employment, were not designed by women or marginalised people. There have been women or non-privileged people in them who have helped steer them somewhere else, but they have, in the main, retained the forms, rules, and means of use designed for them by able bodied men — or to say another way, people in power who have not asked the rest of the people who are important to the situation.
So, when a new technology, industry or niche opens, sometimes women and other excluded populations have a chance to shape it another way to the way it’s always been. What if a colour-blind person had made the internet? ‘Web safe colours’ might look different, first up. What if women had designed a city? Would there be trees with welcoming benches around them in town centres, and dignified bathrooms with amenities and space and privacy? If people in wheelchairs were our architects, how would they design the our buildings and cities?
The thing is, we mostly don’t know, because people other than the men-in-power, are not being asked, called on, or allowed to design these things.
What are we missing out on? My feeling is that we are missing out on things we don’t even know about, cities, objects, services, lifestyles we can’t imagine working (but which would work just as well if not better), because we are trapped in this old patriarchal paradigm that some people made up and then didn’t let anyone else into.
If Feminism is about equality, not just between sexes or genders, but between people more generally; in relationship with each other and also in relationship with spaces, products, services and systems, then this is why I think Feminist Design is the way to go.
Links from this article:
How Urban Planning has Failed Women
Australians don’t loiter in Public Space: The legacy of colonial control by design
Hostile Design
Diverse Founders in Emerging Tech
This is the Billion Dollar Business Women and POC should break into ASAP
What my colour blindness taught me about design
World designed by Women
What if Women designed the World?
What a disability accessible city would look like
At Social Good Outpost, we are feminist designers working with organisations, businesses and social enterprises to make sure they look as good as the services and products they provide. We particularly work with women’s, LGBTIQ, environmental and social causes. Send us a note if you’d like to connect and chat.
