The 2019 Design Census has just been published in the United States, showing important insights into who makes up the design industry but raises important questions about their visibility. In Australia, there is little comparable or consistent information about gender in design. Guest contributor Jane Connory reflects on the invisibility of women in graphic design.
The 2019 Design Census survey was run by Google, the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) and global research firm Accurat, and widely collected data across the United States. This data set is progressive because it was collected and analysed through a gendered lens—something rare in the design industry and in most surveys in general (Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women). As well as female and male genders, respondents had eight non-binary options (non-binary, gender nonconforming, gender fluid, trans, gender questioning, a-gender, bi-gender and pan-gender) to choose from. There were also the options of ‘other’ and ‘prefer not to say’.
This final report profiled the average American designer as white 35-year-old, with a bachelor’s degree, with five to nine years’ experience in a full-time job in-house. This average designer is also a woman who is more likely than a man to work in ‘social impact design’ or ‘communication / graphic design’.
Australia produces little comparable or consistent information on our design industry, especially reports that track gender so comprehensively. The Design Institute of Australia (DIA) conducted a Fee and Salary Survey in 2017 and notably profiled its average designer as a woman in graphic design with five or more years of experience in a role with a salaried position. The sample size being considerably smaller than the AIGA’s. The Australian Bureau of Statistics census data only began reporting on employment in the design industry by gender in 1991. Here, of the 8,600 people who were named as ‘graphic designers’, 45 per cent were women. This wasn’t measured again until 2016, when women became 51 per cent of ‘graphic and web designers and illustrators.’
The pipeline of graphic design designers feeding Australia’s creative industries is also flush with women. Monash University’s pipeline has had women in the majority and on the increase since 1970 (Jane Connory, Plotting a Historical Pipeline of Women and Design Education, Design History Australian Research Network, 2017). This statistic is similar all over Australia, the US and the UK. Here we see a clear picture forming of an industry where women exist in high and increasing numbers, both in Australia and the United States. However, could you name any women who have significantly contributed to this industry?
The invisible workforce
Designers, especially graphic designers, are mostly invisible simply because of the nature of their work. It is the work itself and the client’s brand that becomes the visible aspect of the industry. Designers do not sign their work as an artist might and they often work in collaborative environments with shared authorship. This is on top of the fact that they are rarely counted in survey data.
Platforms that do assign authorship to designers, like awards, conferences, exhibitions and podcasts, also tend to hide women away. Australian’s advertising, graphic design and publishing awards all show a dominance of men on both juries and as recipients of awards (Jane Connory, Blind Embossing: The (In)Visibility and Impact of Women Across Australia’s Advertising, Graphic Design and Publishing Industries, RMIT Design Archives Journal, vol. 8, issue 2, 2018: 56-63).
Rapidly changing technology and design methodologies have also added to this invisibility. As a result, what we call graphic designers has evolved, leaving a disparate and confused understanding of the industry. Graphic design has been labelled Graphic Art, Commercial Art, Industrial Art, Design Arts, Decorative Arts, Applied Arts, the Minor Arts and Visual Communication since 1960 (Alan Young, “A genealogy of graphic design in Victoria,” PhD diss., RMIT University, 2005). Universities and TAFEs are quick to follow and change the names of their qualifications to match.
The published histories of design, like most historical narratives, are heavily skewed to focus on the contributions men make. Women are represented in under 20 per cent of biographies published on Wikipedia (Nadja Sayej, Wikipedia’s forgotten women: inside the editing marathon to fix imbalance, The Guardian, March 15, 2018). Of the small number of books published on Australian graphic design, you are more likely to read about the ephemera designed or the self-published archive of a male practitioner, than a woman’s contributions.
The few times that women are mentioned in these narratives, it is often in association to their husbands. Denise Scott Brown was overlooked for one of the most prestigious prizes in architecture—the Pritzker Architecture Prize—in favour of the contributions of her partner Robert Venturi (Robin Pogrebin, No Pritzker Prize for Denise Scott Brown, The New York Times, June 14, 2014). In Australia’s graphic design Hall of Fame only one woman existed until 2016. This was Dahl Collings, possibly Australia’s first link with the Bauhaus, who was overshadowed by her husband Geoffrey Collings (AGDA Hall of Fame).
Valuing a woman’s contribution
Women populate the design industry in large numbers, which may appear to indicate a workplace that is supportive of their work/life balance. However, as a woman who has spent 25 years in it, this is not the case. The juggle is still difficult, and it has a lot to do with the gendered expectations our society holds for women.
This misunderstanding is particularly evident in the structure of the 2019 Design Census. One example of this is the section of ‘side work’. Here there are nine categories including ‘starting something up’, ‘freelance work’, and ‘teaching’. ‘Volunteering’ is also included, of which 16 per cent of designers are involved. Other unpaid work like child rearing, caring responsibilities and domestic duties are not categories considered as ‘side work’ in this survey.
The omission of these unpaid duties not only devalues this work, but it also adds to its invisibility and reveals an undertone of gender bias in the industry. In general, women in America are more likely to be responsible for household and caring duties in comparison to men (Women in the Workplace). Women in Australia also spend almost three times more time than men on domestic work (2016 Australian Census). It is reasonable to assume that these statistics can be transposed onto the design industry. Therefore, not accounting for this gendered and unpaid work as ‘side work’ paints an inaccurate picture of the design industry and the role women play. It privileges men who statistically have more time in a week to have paid ‘side work’.
An unconscious bias appears when such
unpaid work is dismissed. There are assumptions that this work is unimportant,
that it is distributed evenly across genders, that it does not have an effect
on a person’s career or that it simply does not exist. In itself its exclusion
is a form of gendered blindness especially in an industry where women exist in
high numbers.
The 2019 Design Census has revealed many women but also paints a picture of a workplace that disregards the unpaid work that women do outside of the design industry. This oversight is evidence of a male privilege in the construction of the survey and in general assumptions made about the industry. It reveals a dichotomy of a large statistical presence in comparison to an largely invisible workforce. Nonetheless the 2019 Design Census is taking strides to acknowledge who is really a part of the design industry in the United States, something Australia could mirror. However, considering the problems with invisibility, more can be done for the industry to both acknowledge and celebrate the contributions women make.
Jane Connory recently completed her PhD thesis The View from Here: Exploring the causes of invisibility for women in Australian graphic design and advocating for their equity and autonomy at Monash University.
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