The problem with gender-blind design and how we might begin to address it: A model for intersectional feminist ethical deliberation

¹ See, for example, Prado de O. Martins, 2014 [6].

² Following Jack Halberstam's reasoning, we will be using “trans*” instead of “trans” or any other variant throughout this document. This is meant to highlight the lack of any singular category or definition for a trans identity, arguing further for the boundless fluidity of gender identification [11].

³ There are numerous ways in which a design, whatever shape it may take, can embody and bespeak the ethical decisions that were made in its conception. See Friedman and Kahn, 2002 [16].

⁴ Keshavarz describes his understanding of design-politics as being similar to Foucault's power-knowledge binomial [4], describing it as the origin of the term “nexus” to describe the concept [21]. Thus, according to him, delineating a design-politics is a way of both embodying and describing the numerous ways in which politics and design have historically and materially upheld and strengthened one another [21].

⁵ Alastair Fuad-Luke defined design activism as “design thinking, imagination and practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and economic change” (p. 27) [22].

⁶ Throughout his work, Foucault dwells a lot on the ways in which external power structures produce subjects; that is, in how regimes of social control exert power — and thus control. In Discipline and Punish, for example, he describes how disciplinary techniques produce “docile bodies” in order to make them more compliant and productive [24]. In History of Sexuality, which immediately followed the latter, Foucault introduced the concept of ‘biopower,’ which seizes the modern forms of power aimed at living beings by holding them subject to standards of not just sexual but also biological normality [24]. Through these works, one can subsume the larger issue of individual agency. Not only is there an exerted control enacted through other people's knowledge of individuals, but also one exercised in an individual's knowledge of themselves, through these power relations dictated by hegemonic sociocultural institutions.

⁷ An investigation conducted by The Pudding recently verified what we all already knew — that clothes marketed to women have significantly smaller pockets than those for men — 48% smaller and 6.5% narrower to be exact [33]. The reason for this impractical annoyance is, of course, anchored in political and historically rooted sexism [34].

⁸ Smartphone designs have been steadily increasing in recent years, which can pose as a problem for many women, whose hands are, on average, around 2.5cm smaller than men's [31] [35]. This, evidently, makes these phones harder to use for women or just anyone with smaller hands. Further, these phones can also be harder to store, given the above-mentioned reduced size of pockets in clothing marketed to women [31] [33] [35].

⁹ Office temperatures are typically standardized and regulated according to calculations based on an assumed average male body of 40 years of age and 70kg [36]. A study published in Nature, however, recently found that female metabolisms typically run 35% lower than the rate of males under that same calculation [36]. This, on average, results in a preference gap of about 3ºC, with women preferring higher temperatures than men [36].

¹⁰ As discussed earlier, seemingly objective automated systems are not neutral. The Algorithmic Justice League collective has produced an expanding body of work documenting the ways in which AI and Machine Learning technologies are intersectionally biased [45].

¹¹ Please refer to [46] (p.205) for an image of the winning plan for the redesign of the Einsiedlerpark in Vienna, Austria, by landscape architects’ practice Tilia.

¹² This was also done for Viennese sports facilities for essentially the same reason [46]. Girls weren't using them because boys would tend to aggregate near the only entrance and so they decided to create multiple entrances, instead of just one. They also sectioned these spaces [46].

¹³ Bovens and Marconi also discuss strategies aimed at combating the notion that desegregated bathrooms would be uncomfortable or unhygienic [54].

¹⁴ It should be remarked that Levitas's work is largely focused on utopia [59]. Though it falls beyond the purview of this article, it could be argued that the utopian project is very closely aligned with that described herein.