Comments on: Male versus Female Designers

By: Ann@Wii softmod

Ann@Wii softmod — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:47:16 +0000

I don’t think that gender is still an issue in every industry. There are so many women out there who actually themselves to become highly competitive. So whether you’re a male or a female, both of you deserves respect.

By: mao

mao — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:20:23 +0000

@Tom
IMHO sex doesn’t matter in terms of achievements and responsibility, but I do think there are some Inherent characteristics or skills due to social constrains or brain differences that indeed make girls more suitable for some tasks than others and company should take advantage of that. For example I do think womans are more organized and more attention to detail than man but man tend to be better problem solvers. Off course all this vary due to cultural paradigms and the personality of each individuo.

By: Tom Hewitt

Tom Hewitt — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:25:17 +0000

Sex doesn’t really matter in the business. Men who are better at fashion design than women generally have better ideas. Also, the woman’s body is rather simple as far as fashion goes.

By: mao

mao — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:03:22 +0000

@Ash Black you are so right. Thats the great thing about a team. You need different approaches diferents angles.

By: Ash Black

Ash Black — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:36:53 +0000

I think its all about that man and woman look at things differently, take actions differently and so for any team/company/business to be successful required both

By: Matei

Matei — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:26:03 +0000

Great article. I enjoy it as much as the comments, especially Mike’s.

By: estefany

estefany — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:30:35 +0000

@mike
Interesting comments, Mike. Specially the story of your architect friend. It shows that some women (like her professor) try so hard to make women look superior that forgets to look at what they’re really doing. That’s the problem of worrying too much about stereotypes.
@melody
Wow, I’ve never seen more women than men (in class or at work). Maybe it’s a geographical matter, where are you from? And if there’s a real increasing of women in design (I think so) let’s hope now we can make part of history too. ;)

By: Melody

Melody — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:32:06 +0000

When I started my degree in Graphic Design people joked that I was doing it to find a man, because it’s tended to be a male saturated program, but my classes were mainly with girls! To be fair, there were many more girls at my college to start with, but even outside of that I’ve met more women graphic designers than men.

I’d say that’s a recent development though. Perhaps the women of this generation have not had the chance yet to change the history of design ;)

By: yanki

yanki — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:49:36 +0000

great article! thnx ^_^

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:27:44 +0000

Having spent five years in Architecture school; many years in art classes before, and now a few years practicing outside of school; I’ve seen a bit of this byplay at work and school.

Design-wise I never have noticed a difference in talent between males and females. There are scads of talented ladies out there as well as men.

I have noticed a difference in ‘accepting criticism’. The women I have worked with have all had a varying degree of difficulty accepting critical comments on their work. In school it was much more prevalent than it is out. To be fair there were men who had a hard time with criticism as well; though there seemed to be fewer.

The men usually would get either defensive or busy, turning the criticism into motivation to work (not always good work, but work all the same). The ladies have tended to take that criticism and turn in into a personal attack that leaves them emotional and unmotivated; weather it was intended as such or not.

I have a good friend who is a female Architect and during school we had a professor who was singularly hard on her because they were both female (the rest of the design studio was male). The professor took the line that she should push the girl to do better to prove that she was just as good or better than the men. Unfortunately my friend did not share the attitude and took the professor’s, particularly hard, criticisms as personal attacks.

Another other issue I’d like to comment on is one of ‘worker productivity’. In the profession of Architecture there tend to be two types of firms. The first the the traditional ‘your-life-belongs-to-design’ type that expects employees to spend the great majority of their time at work; usually about 60 hours a week. The second is a ‘family-oriented’ firm that focuses on getting more productivity in during your standard 40 hours and understanding that employees have lives outside of work.

In regards to the two above have heard of some employers considering the possibility, and even genetic pre-disposition, of women to begin gearing their lives for children starting in the mid-twenties and on.

Some view this as a ‘lack of commitment’ to the profession; while others just don’t like the cut in productivity.

Family oriented firms (like the one I work for) tend to take a much ’softer’ view on this and really try to let their employees (male and female) have time for family.

Either way you slice it I think women are really coming into their own in the ‘design’ fields and in the coming decades you’re going to see a new ‘equality’ setting itself up with women equaling men on all fronts.