International Women's Day
2018
Numbers show that there’s a very small percentage of women leading the creative industry. That said, it is strange when art and design schools filled with mostly women filter into an industry mostly crowded with men, particularly in leadership positions. As a professor at Parsons School of Design, Hala Abdel Malak says her students are 90 percent female — a number that does not reflect the state of the industry outside of education “I teach almost all women, but the industry is all men”. Abdel Malak speaks of her personal experiences of missing out on promotions and other opportunities simply because she is a woman. “Woman shouldn’t be the first thing that I am seen as. I’m successful, I’m a professor, I’m a cultural ambassador, I’m all of those things, and also a woman” deciding that it is important to move past the categorisation of gender altogether.
Gender disparity is not a new topic of conversation and gender roles have changed dramatically, but we live in a world where inequality still exists. Strength, charisma, assertiveness and dominance are all traits considered to be masculine—and all traits that are quintessential of the ‘leader’ character. Equality has moved from an explicit conversation to an implicit one, where we deal with micro-aggressions and silent stereotyping, which is fueling the persistent underrepresentation of women in positions of leadership. These implicit biases lead to the gender discrimination that shapes our decisions in a silent and pervasive way. Opening up the world of design doesn’t just mean more adding more women to the mix, but creating an equal playing field across the spectrums of diversity whilst adding voices to the conversation.
It is perceived by activist and author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, that cognitive biases are the trigger for gender stereotypes and prejudices and she speaks in her much-admired TEDx talk, We Should All Be Feminists, of how to tackle the root of the problem, “how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.” Feminism: that tainted word that although causes some discomfort and resistance in both men and women, provokes a conversation and movement that is so important for positive change, in giving females the same opportunities as males.
It is our responsibility as women to never back down, to aspire with no limitations to every opportunity. As I enter a world where limitations are put on me but I choose not to accept but to exceed them.