PROJECT
DESIGN FOR EQUALITY: building tomorrow's creative universities.
PROJECT
It is possible to (re)think universities' role in gender equality.
The relevance of this project.
Today, gender equality is no longer confined to the social dimension and represents an asset within the economy and businesses. It turned to be a strategic tool for companies dealing with innovation and the promotion of a more egalitarian workplace turned, also, into a challenge for most of them (PWC, 2015). The scenario suggests that part of the educational role should take place inside the university, in order to prepare graduates to grasp equality principles to respond with precision to Design Management needs in groups formed by both men and women, who have diverse backgrounds, cultures and beliefs. This research looks forward to extend the knowledge into the role of universities in the development of the workforce and, particularly, to understand their contribution in promoting an egalitarian and diverse role for women. It is also an opportunity to learn about ways of behaviour that perpetuate inequalities.
When Design Embraces Gender
The creative industry is historically marked by female exclusion, as noted by Buckley (1986), who found that in Design methods of selection and classification were largely influenced by a patriarchal and capitalist context, which tended to favour, among others, mass production to the detriment of artisanal skills. (Buckley, 1986, at Regina, & Correia, 2016)
“Women have been involved with design in a variety of ways – as practitioners, theorists, consumers, historians, and as objects of representation. Yet a survey of the literature of design history, theory, and practice would lead one to believe otherwise. Women’s interventions, both past and present, are consistently ignored. Indeed, the omissions are so overwhelming, and the rare acknowledgments so cursory and marginalized, that one realizes these silences are not accidental and haphazard; rather, they are the direct consequence of specific historiographical methods (Buckley, 1986, at Regina, & Correia, 2016, p3)”
The objectives
The objective of this study is to define a strategic proposal to better prepare the university and its students to cope with a workplace and a job market, in which toxic behaviors and gender inequalities are not perpetuated. Taking into consideration that other studies have focused their scope of analysis on abusive and harassing environments in the workplace itself, this study aims for a different approach, namely by confronting the problem at an initial or pre-work stage: at the university. Indeed, a university compromised with gender equality can be designed and applied, if constraints and opportunities are identified in its own environment and solutions are drawn based on the structure of the institution. In its overview part, it contains a market analysis and a context immersion, in which the reader can have contact with the concepts and the applications of gender equality, while bringing the students, teachers and professionals point of views on the theme. Finally, this piece of work presents the information collected in the case study and, based on it, constructs a journey map proposal that can serve as a starting point or a prototype to be applied at the university.
Methodology
This work unfolded along four main cumulative stages:: (i) literary review, intended to provide context and preliminary analysis on the topics of discussion; (ii) data collection on gender issues, through a questionnaire conducted at the university selected for study and interviews made with professionals and teachers; (iii) analysis of data and information and mapping of gender inequalities, to evaluate the situation at the university, in terms of gender culture and adoption of these topics, and to provide ideas and lines of action for the next stage, and (iv) application of design tools and formulation of recommendations, in order to build a model for the adoption of gender equality principles and practices at the university and build final recommendations to put into practice the former.
The survey conducted with students from IADE-Lisbon showed a lack of debate around the gender equality. Here you can see some results:
- more than 50% of students reported not to have discussed about gender equality at university
67,4% considered gender equality a topic of personal interest.
45,7% of respondents considered the issue of gender equality to be a matter of concern for all, while 34,8% directly pointed out to the responsibility of the university to address the topic to contribute to a more egalitarian market.
The investigation was also centered on undesrtanding violence dynamics inside the campus.
Situations of harassment were reported to have been personally experienced and/or identified in the campus, mostly through sexist jokes and anecdotes (43,8%), constant interruptions while another person was speaking (12,5%) and defamation about physical appearance (9,4%) – with these accounts being almost exclusively delivered by female respondents.
Designing a journey for equality
Different professionals, students and researchers from several branches of Design were invited to participate in an experience intended to co-create in a design journey proposal, that could enhance the university’s role as a promoter of equality in creative industries.
The literary review, the survey and the interviews pointed out to several challenges and hardships that women often face at different moments of their life trajectories (e,g, gaps in salaries, glass-ceiling problem, low motherhood support, unbalanced division of tasks at home, prevailing culture of “blue and pink” in consumption). Therefore, the full spectrum of a Design Journey proposal can be helpful in addressing all these challenges and helping to better design solutions to overcome problems.
The structure of a life journey was inspired by a research conducted by Walker (2017), in which the author considered a similar diagram to portray the journey, typically made by African and Latin American students in the United States, to learn and practise design at the university and in the labor market. Walker’s (2017) study, which intends to help design students, young designers and respective families to achieve their goals, uses the following Design Journey Map:
The focus group helped to understand barriers and design solutions having women's life journeys in consideration.
The results are for all: society, students and university staff.
Three pillars of intervention were considered as part of the strategic proposal: Legal, Literacy and Advocacy. The Legal pillar incorporates the juridic and policy elements that can guarantee respect for labor rights and gender equality, and that can be present in legislation or internal regulations. Literacy is safeguarded by the knowledge built around the theme of gender equality and sets the need for information to be accessible to everyone, in order to reduce misconception and achieve better results. Finally, Advocacy takes into account the principle that an inspirational influencer can advocate to amplify unheard voices but also serve as role model to empower younger ones and/or to engage or stimulate them to achieve personal goals and to participate actively in their community.
With three target population (i.e. Teachers and Support Staff, Students and Community) and three pillars (i.e. Legal, Literacy and Advocacy), different matrices of opportunities and applications were ready to be filled in. These represented the recommendations and guiding lines to develop, afterwards, the strategic ideas.
To each journey step was addressed strategic solutions to elevate women’s participation and decrease inequalities to its students. The university have a central role in making flourish social and organizations participation.
