Extraña situación narrativa

Howard and Setliff (2000) indicate that the idea of a unique perspective which women would bring to design began to be acknowledged by both employers and women designers in the US of the mid-century. They mention that the active women designers of these years, such as Manderfield, Diamond and Kogan, expressed the view that women designers could benefit feminine consumers since they know what women want. Not the first, but a distinctive example is the ‘Damsels of Design’ who are a group of women designers hired by Earl, General Motors’ vice-president of styling, in order to bring a “woman appeal” to automobiles and deal with the ‘problems’ of women drivers (Kirkham and Walker 2000; Howard and Setliff 2000). In a press release in 1957 Earl stated:

Besides being color and fabric specialists, our women designers are tuned especially to the woman driver’s problems. . . They are strong advocates of the six-way seat for greater comfort and visibility. . . And, of course, they are always on the look-out for anything that might snag their nylons. . . So many talented girls are entering our field of design that in three or four years, women may be designing entire car exteriors. (Doering et al. 1994, 15) While the notion of the ‘feminine sensibility’ was appreciated by some of the women

designers, one of the ‘Damsels’ criticised the emphasis on their femaleness and indicated that they could never be identified as just designers, but as ‘female designers’ even when they do the same job as men (Howard and Setliff 2000).

Bruce (1985) observes that the small representation of women in the profession of industrial design has two unfavourable consequences. First, women designers’ ‘tacit knowledge’ is not used as a source in the design process, and second, the needs and demands of women users are ignored. She suggests that because men create products with regard to their ‘tacit knowledge’ and assumptions about women’s priorities, values and roles, these designs are not compatible with women users’ preferences. Also, such products strengthen and reproduce stereotypical images of women in the society. For her, only when the number of women in the area of industrial design increases, will there be the opportunity to create radical designs which challenge the existing notions about women. Sharing the same concerns, Perkins (1999) indicates that women’s presence makes differences in the key decisions regarding what makes a product comfortable, appropriate, and appealing to women. As a professional designer, she states that, although she refused to design products associated with femininity through her career, it is also critical for women designers to use their experiences in gendered roles while designing products whose primary users are women. According to her,

As women begin to form a critical mass in the profession, creating [their] own businesses and networks, perhaps trying to fit in with male-defined norms of what is aesthetically pleasing, of what is most comfortable and easy to use, will become obsolete. (1999, 125)

With an ecofeminist approach, Amon (1999) focuses on the use of technology and suggests that women’s participation in product design may bring new ways of using technology. She advocates that women can design environment-friendly and aesthetically appealing products by recognising and using their own values.

In a similar vein, in their qualitative research on designers’ opinions about gender’s role in the field of industrial design, Doering et al. (1994) find that some designers claim that, due to the different life experiences, skills and abilities, women designers can contribute to design profession in a different manner than their male colleagues. Drawing attention to women’s disproportionate share of family responsibilities, these designers argue that women designers can create products which “satisfy many demands at once – aesthetics, comfort, versatility,

efficiency, low-cost – because their own lives involve a complex juggling of career and family” (7). However, Doering et al. underline that this is not an essentialist claim, this difference does not inherently exist, and it may disappear as the gender roles change.

The notion of ‘feminine sensibility’ is also suggested by Martínez (2007) in his paper investigating the increasing interest in women designers in Italian and Spanish design after the 1980s. One of his case studies is a design contest open only to female participants, organised by a well-known Italian company, Alessi. What makes this contest significant is that it is the first collaboration of this company with women designers. He suggests two reasons for why the company invites particularly women designers to that contest, whilst it did not work with women before then. First, the company expected women designers to bring a ‘female sensibility’, and assumed that they would be ‘more prepared’ to design products to be used by women, the new user group targeted by the company. Second, collaborating with women designers was an attempt to compensate for the lack of gender balance of the Alessi designers in order to update the company image with the 1990s’ cultural shift. Thus, in this case, women designers were demanded as a part of the company’s feminised brand strategy.

It seems that, whether linked to the women user or company image, the idea that women may bring a different approach to design from that of men was used by industry to justify women’s involvement in industrial design especially in the last decades of the twentieth century. For example, in the US women’s representation in industrial design jumped to 19 percent by 1999, while it was only one percent in 1974 (Howard and Setliff 2000). Also, considering that women who entered the professions in the design field felt the necessity to deny the stereotypical feminine taste and adopt a masculine stance (Sparke 1995), similar to women in engineering, the appreciation of feminine values may also be evaluated as a way that encourages women to bring their own approach to design. However, at this point two concerns need further attention. First, this notion does not challenge the gender structures and relations waiting for women in these male-dominated work environments. Second, identification of women with a specific type of contribution to the profession perpetuates the existing woman stereotype and confines them to limited areas in design.