Hi Sam,
I'm interested in how you feel the reason for gendering occurs and why
biological women and men are associated with genders.
Best wishes,
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sam
Ladner
Sent: Sunday, 20 January 2008 7:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Gender
Hello all,
While I haven't read every post on this topic, I see a bit of confusion that
can be cleared up by looking at gender studies' fundamentals.
The notion that men and women have "different hormones" really is irrelevant
here. Men's and women's hormonal structure has been shown to affect a very
narrow portion of human behavior, specifically relating to aggression. See
Armstrong and Armstrong, The Double Ghetto for a very nice critique of
supposed anatomical differences that are actually constructed out of
gendered assumptions.
Gender is a very fluid category. See for example the excellent film Paradise
Bent, the story of the Fa'Fa'Fine on the island of Samoa. This is
effectively a third gender: anatomical men that take on stereotypical
feminine roles, including housework, childrearing and sexualized labour.
These men are not ashamed or hidden -- in fact it's considered a blessing to
have such people in one's family.
The point of that example is to show our "male designers" discussion isn't
about men, but false androgyny. We assume there to be one gender of
importance, that is the masculine gender. We ignore "feminine" issues of
home life, reproductive labour, sexual objectification, and systemic
under-valuing of empathy.
We will likely NOT see a 50/50 ratio of credentialed designers, just as we
do not see a 50/50 ratio of law firm partners, CEOs, engineers, computer
scientists, surgeons, or airline pilots despite many years of women entering
these fields. The issue isn't that we don't have enough women with
sufficient experience in the field yet, and just given time, we will have
them.
No the issue is the systematic undervaluing of life concerns that typically
fall under women's responsibility. That is to say women's domestic labour
and social labour prevents them from reaping the full benefit of their
professional experience.
Gender is not sex; women are not anatomically determined to be empathetic or
caring. Neither are men pre-programmed to be insensitive poor designers who
ignore the users of their products.
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