Gender and Design
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Women’s participation in ‘world shaping’ activities and their representation through design is still circumscribed by gender imbalances and exclusion, reflecting wider gender inequalities across a broad spectrum of society.
The discipline of design plays a central role in how the human made world is constructed, yet material agency is distributed unequally, economically, culturally and by gender. This talk will discuss some of the ways in which gendered power relations impact on the design of the artefacts, sites, and systems that we live with, in and by. For material agency to distributed equally, not only by gender but also by age, class and ethnicity, we need to better understand how designs’ role in re-producing in-equality and demand a future design practice that attends to gender equality and social justice. We need a design practice that transcends traditional and binary constructions of gender, addresses intersectional lives, and the symbolic and embodied violence which excludes people from materializing their lived realities and futures. Join us in exploring issues around this theme and discover some of the work done that tries to address it.
Presenter Bio
Dr. Melanie Levick-Parkin is a feminist design researcher and design educator, with an interest in heritage, human making practices and visual/material language. There is a particular focus on gender and design in her research and she works within speculative and design anthropological methods and approaches. She is passionate about situating design in the context of political, social and environmental justice and ethics (and hopes design can become a better person).
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