Formative Years
If we truly want to design for women, we must get in the game early
I attended an all girls catholic elementary school in North India, run by nuns. For five years, I dressed in my perfect and clean uniform, doing everything by the book to not be picked on by a school teacher. God forbid if you forgot to rub off your nail paint after summer vacation, or got caught passing notes about a boy in class — you might as well spend the first two periods standing outside class in the hallway, or in some cases, sitting on a trash can. This wasn’t out of the ordinary. Teachers would become famous for how strict they were, discipline was a success metric, and shame a punishment tactic.
I clearly remember a Math class, where upon realising that I hadn’t finished a part of the summer holiday homework, fear quickened my heartbeat. With shaking hands, I asked my friend if I could copy hers so I wouldn’t be humiliated in front of the whole class. A star student was reprimanded & sent home, when she wore a “dress too revealing” (we could dress in non-uniform for our birthdays), and the news spread like wildfire across the student body in whispers. In grade five, the teacher casually told the whole class that “we could now get blood in our panties’’ without explaining what menstruation is. Then, she called on the names of my classmates who had begun to develop breasts and went to have a chat with them outside the class. As I sat inside the classroom, I wondered why I wasn’t chosen or if something was wrong with my body.
Writing these stories here, I feel I’m being dramatic. This wasn’t a Handmaid’s Tale nunnery, a Queen’s Gambit orphanage — and thousands of girls were experiencing this everyday as normal. However, these are still my formative years. When I think of that Math class, I can still feel the fear of shame & making mistakes vividly. I felt a touch of schadenfreude when that birthday girl was sent home — the seat for star student was now up for grabs, and there was only space for one. And, I learned that revealing your body makes you a bad girl. I still suffer from the partnership of menstruation and shame. And, I still wonder what type of body is “woman-enough.”
The good girl I had become by the age of ten is still part of how I navigate the world today. I’m not sure the world acknowledges that, let alone designs for it. When we Design for Women today, we must acknowledge their past. And, at the same time, we’ve got to get in the game early — research shows that confidence levels among girls aged 9–14 drop by 30% and it’s no mystery that tech & social media affect teenagers the most as portrayals of sexuality, beauty, confidence are changing fast.
This post is an excerpt from Unconforming: a newsletter about Design for Women. Unconforming goes out every two weeks and also shares learnings from experts, job and other opportunities, examples and articles — all to make an impact in the women’s space. Sign up here to get it in your inbox!
