June 29, 2004 | View Comments (59) | Category: Our Thoughts
Summary: Wondering where all the ***** are will get us no where. They are there.
It started for me when Bowman wrote, Who/Where are the Women?, and received a lot of insightful comments from men and women pointing to all the quality female designers out there. Every once in a while I would think how cool it would be to get a female's perspective on things, but not too many showup here on WS to comment.
I did the First Ever Whitespace Awards asking for women to step up. Why? I don't know, I guess because I love women. Sometimes I get tired of the testerone dominated discussions that occur everywhere. But that's what our community is right now and I don't think it will change because it mirrors society.
Then Winer had his server taken offline and later wrote how the women were attacking him.
The attackers are dispropotionately women. Do you think maybe they're using me to get even for how someone treated them? A father, a brother, an uncle, an ex? Does our culture let them be abusers, assuming the man is always wrong, guilty until proven innocent?
Shelley obviously took offense to this as should anyone. Reading both sides of the story I got a little upset. Don't worry I will ignore the idiocy of Winer's statement since that is not the point of this entry.
Along the same lines of women some people may wonder where all the black people are. How about the hispanics? Asians? Then I figured out that really I don't care. I am not being cold at all, it's just the web does give everyone the opportunity to standout and speak. Yes the male species holds an unfair advantage and our own stereotypes prevent us many times from seeing things clearly, but if you wish to be recognized on a grand scale there are ways to go about it without losing your integrity.
Many people don't want to be in the spotlight. Some don't want the attention that would occur when you speak loudly or cause the kind of buzz that is necessary to become “popular” in the blogosphere. I do though. I love attention and most of the people out there who say they don't write for the people are lying. When I started this blog I gave no personal information about myself that would disclose my race or any other facts. I was a newcomer to the blogosphere and I figured that if I could prevent any stereotypes that I would be alright. The sad thing is, I was right. When pictures of me finally surfaced everyone was surprised to see that I wasn't a white middle-class male alpha nerd.
Helen talks about the lack of women and how in the past there seemed to be more women. Maybe the women are smart enough to ignore all this nonsense we call the blogosphere and go out to make some money. Maybe the men have more time on our hands. Who knows, who cares? Just enjoy what we got while we got it.
And as for the blokes - are we *all* middle-class and white? Sometimes it seems that way.
We have to understand how small this community is and that sometimes we act like fish in an aquarium that are unaware that a whole world exists outside. I know of design communities filled with women. There are other communities that are filled with various ethnic groups. They are happy there, we are happy here. Yeah it would be great to have every blogosphere community interlinked, but we deal with what we got.
I see a design. I see words. I don't see a white man or a rebellious female trying to make a stand for herself. When I read an entry by Zeldman I never think that it is one smart white jewish guy speaking. The only time we should be concerned about these issues is when we are actively trying to prevent others from joining in. Till then nobody should be concerned about it. If the women wish to do what they do, then let them be, although I wish more would comment here.
All types of designers are out there. Are they in this community? Some. Just the way things are working out right now.
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Well I could only wish the girls looked as good as you Mike. Haha.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
I'm surprised. I would imagine women to be much better in the aesthetic field of design since, as a rule, women tend to be more creative, imaginative, emotive and artistic than men - yet we rarely hear from them.
Perhaps the old adage, "behind every successful man is a woman," applies in the world of design too?
I'm damn sure that they are more active contributors than we know.
Jonathan Hollin (http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/)
Well, at least you drink good beer. If that'd been a Budweiser in your hand, I probably would have had to drop you from my Daily Reading list. :-D
KillAllDash9 (http://pulpblog.com)
Dude, I've worked with all kinds (races, sexes) and it is kind of strange how many high-five'n white guys seem to hang around design commenting on community blogs.
Guess some of us need more attention eh?
Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)
Wait...my dyslexia is acting up.
That should read "hang around commenting on design community blogs."
Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)
I don't care, wondering where the female designers are is pointless as it singles them out like they should be treated differently. It's like making a fuss about wondering where all the disabled designers are.
As for me, i'm a white irish guy from a poor background, who's also gothic. Every other guy on my computing courses always came from a "rich" background and their parents were involved in IT - none of my family have been involved in IT, nor have they ever been, i'm the only one.
Luckily background/race/gender means nothing, so I always came out on top.
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
I kinda agree w/Robert.
Not sure of the point you're trying to make here. On one hand it seems like your making a call for more diversity here. Although, I can't ever recall anyone really introducing themselves as "I'm so and so, an [insert ethnicity / gender here] from...at the same time, I don't recall you ever asking.
But, then on the other hand you state you don't really care...
...and then the pics. Are these girls designers? Do they post here? Are those pics designed to attract more women to post here because you're "girl friendly?"
Stereotypes? Who's stereotyping you?
Just curious.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Hell yeah dude! Tell them! As for me, I'm a mexican uhm... midget. Yess. With antennae. Flying, too. Mexican flying midget. Yeah.
Actually, I dropped my only chance at being an opressed minority by being a male white middleclasser. Damn.
Sergio (http://overcaffeinated.net)
Scrivs, when I recently began reading your articles, I began to visualize what you look like or what kind of a person you are by your personality or the way you talk. I think most of us tend to do this with anyone's writings. But most often than not, we could probly say the author looked much different than we expected.
Some people look the way they act or talk. We all have an idea of what an acountant, farmer, rapper, or surfer might look like or talk like. When I think of a web designer I probably would think of a white male. In your case Scrivs, I figured you were an older white male as well. But it's nice to know your not a complete geek.
It is kind of weird when you think about it. But like Robert said, it really means nothing. Yet, if I were to know the person behind the articles I'm reading is a younger person who likes to do simillar things as I, like surfing for example, I would probably have more interest in that person because we share simillarities.
As for female designers, I would like to see more. I think females bring a diferent perspective on things. In fact, I just found a young girl thats very interested in photography and web design. So I plan on taking her in on a few of my projects.
Jason Marble
Hmmm, well Mark you missed it on this one. I wasn't making a call for anyone to standup at all. Like I said I could care less as long as I still have a great number of sites to go to. The stereotype thing comes from people writing me and saying "Dude, I thought you were white!", that's all.
And no, those girls are definitely not designers. I think you took the ball and ran the wrong way with this entry, which is probably my fault.
Just trying to say forget about race and gender. Just design and have fun.
Sergio: Rock on man. Haha.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Oh well...To my credit, I did say that I was confused.
I guess my "own stereotypes prevent[ed me]...from seeing things clearly."
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
I read recently that women had finally become more than 50% of online shoppers and that in a couple of years they would be 80% (can't remember the exact figures). So most web sites will be designed for women. What to the women here think of that?
Wayne Rooney (http://www.01010.org)
I've been thinking about a similar concept for the last few days, ever since I attended my first WSG meeting on Monday night. I finally met people like Cameron Adams, Matty McG, Ryan Smith, Steph Troeth and David McDonald, along with many more. I have visited each of those people's websites a number of times. Some of them I've been reading for years
Not one of them was like my mind pictured them (although I had at least seen photos of Matt and Steph before). That doesn't really mean anything though. It never has
The girl in the short skirt that caught your eye at the bus stop might be a lawyer or a hairdresser. She might be nice, or funny, but maybe not both. She have any personality or history in your head, but you'll never know unless you talk to her
You can never truly know a person, so preconceptions are the mind's method of coping. It is a technique for providing some predictability, bring order out of chaos, that sort of thing. Some people are good at adapting their mental images of other people without flinching. Others lose the plot when people don't conform to expectations, but the problem is that no one can meet those expectations because they (the expectations) aren't real, they are merely projections
(Did I really write all that deep and meaningful stuff? I think I need more coffee. Or maybe I already had too much...)
Nakijo (http://nakijo.vna.com.au)
Unfortunately, most times when companies "design for women" (think air quotes) sh*t ends up pink.
Back to the topic at hand: I can't really offer an opinion as to where the women are in the design community since I'm not a designer (I'm a programmer). However, I do think there are more women milling around than it seems.
Nicole (http://nicoleswan.com)
I'm surprised. I would imagine women to be much better in the aesthetic field of design since, as a rule, women tend to be more creative, imaginative, emotive and artistic than men - yet we rarely hear from them.
A point of fact for the discussion: Most of the design team at Yahoo! are women, with a woman as the executive design lead. At Adobe, more than half of the team are women, again with a woman in charge at the director level. At Google, half of the team are women (although their team is less than ten people.)
You will find this is largely the case more often than not at many high-tech companies.
Why fewer blogs or online prescenes from these female designers? Anybody's guess. My guess is that has to do with the arcane installation procedures, non-intuitive use of UNIX to manage servers, and God-awful usability issues around OSS that I ranted about in my RTFM piece.
Who wants to spend long nights and weekends trying to think of the right Google search term to figure why the hell PHP-Mod won't work? Guys will tolerate that stuff more often than most women in my experience, especially women who are designers. (Female engineers don't tend to exhibit this behavorial trait.)
But that's a theory based purely on speculation; it's obviosuly a generalization and not concrete fact. I do assert that if the tools were designed so that mere mortals could use them, you'd see a vastly different story than you do today.
Andrei Herasimchuk (http://www.designbyfire.com)
I am a female web designer and have been for a few years now. I never thought twice about women being web designers: frankly, I expected more women to go into that field than into other computer related fields like software development and engineering. But over the years, I have noticed that the lack of women in web design is similar to the lack of women in most professional computer fields. I have never personally met another female Web designer, but of course I run across sites designed by women every now and again. Most women I encounter in the "real world" have a different conception of computers and the Internet then the men that I have met. Many women - not all, not "as a rule," but many - think of computers in a similar way as they do cell phones and Palm pilots: communication devices designed for consumer use, but not necessarily for consumer modification as far as software and user interface is concerned. I haven't met any women who want to _add_ anything to the Internet as far as design is concerned. I have met a few teachers and students who want to get information out, but none of them cared much about how it was presented. I am not like many women, though. I do want to add information (or, better put, my take on things), but I also want to make sure that it is presented in the best way possible: easy to navigate, easy to read, and pleasant look at. I want to be a part of the change I wish to see in the world, and I wish more women would join the cause. Then again, even if more women were empowered with the skill set necessary for good CSS design, they might be lazy and put off when it came to their own web site. Such is the case with me and my blog. ;-)
Jamie G. (http://thinkdifferent.typepad.com)
Hi there; another female web geek here.
:: comes out from hiding ::
I'm not overly shocked web design/development is still a male dominated field. Computer science and engineering in general have always been male dominated fields, the same way medicine and law used to be.
The Internet (as we know it) has really only been around for 10 years. My first exposure was in 1995, but it wasn't until I entered college in 1998 that I realized it was a field worth pursuing. And even then, many universities were not prepared to offer training in Internet-related fields. By 2001, University of Florida unveiled numerous Internet-based degrees and specializations such as online journalism and e-business.
I would say that in my classes for online journalism, there was an even split of males and females (as an added note, our professor was female). As for those who were passionate about the subject, I might have to give that edge to the guys.
Unfortunately, since I consider myself pretty passionate about computers, the Internet and the web, I can't say why others haven't stepped forward. It might be the stereotype that computers and gadgets are 'guy things' and such fields are like the 'old boys club.'
That can be uncomfortable for some women who don't like being in a minority. It's also requires a lot of constant confidence building. (I don't mean to knock the guys, but in my past experience in male dominated fields, if you can't match their work or keep up with them, you won't earn their respect. The confidence building or ability to dismiss their view is what's needed to keep going back every day.)
But I'm not too worried... I think its only a matter of time before women are major players on the Internet and the computer industry.
Erin (http://www.zenhaus.net)
Anderi's comment got me thinking about my work. There's 38 or so designers in my area. I think (quick head count) that about 11 are male.
I never really think about it until I go to lunch with people from my unit. It's always me and 4 to 7 other women. But we usually go out for "ethnic" food and the guys I work with only venture out to places like Arby's.
Matthew Oliphant (http://businesslogs.com)
Just curious, is that the same girl? Is that your gf Paul? or just some girls you getting jiggy wit? :)
Bryan (http://www.juicedthoughts.com)
"i'm a white irish guy from a poor background, who's also gothic"
Robert, that would make a great tagline. And Scrivs, now I know the true location of all that whitespace. :)
I shaved my head all through Uni. The ladies love to stroke it, don't they?
"Who cares?" Is the best way of looking at it, because yes, we are all different. The one thing we all have in common though, is that we're total geeks.
Jim Amos (http://graphikjunkie.com/)
Bryan: No way man. Those are 2 different girls. Scrivs has no gf.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Who cares is definitely the best policy.
I'm sick of society viewing the world as a collection of races split into two sexes. We're all people, right?
As far as the sexes go, you can generalize on their personalities and characteristics. But it's still rare to find a man or a woman who behaves exactly the way a man or woman is "supposed" to act. You'll find sensitive men and fiery women (they're the best, IMHO ;)). If men and women didn't differ from the "norm" so much as individuals, we could just go out and date anyone, and that wouldn't be much fun.
It just takes time. Right now, American politics is dominated by the white upper-class. Slowly this has been changing. By the time I die, we may have a poor man in the White House.
Right now, the small group of a-list web design bloggers are middle-class white men. This too will change over time.
But the way you must look at it is this: we aren't aiming to increase racial/sexual diversity in any community. We're aiming to increase intellectual diversity. The two go hand-in-hand to a certain extent. However, I want to be able to say, "Oh yeah, that's the guy who came up with that awesome CSS methodology," rather than, "Oh, that's the black web designer."
Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)
My other penis is a vagina, so I will represent for the women. Although, I think that they would rather not have me, or at least that's what they usually say.
:-/
Ryan Latham (http://worldoneweb.com)
Second Whitespace Awards:
Thoubt to be a web designer, turning out to be a playa: Scrivs.
I kid, I kid. I think you are right. Does it really matter who it is behind the scenes? All I care about is what you think.
Sunny
Male designers seem to compete more for 'wise-master' status - in the way that we want to write up the most poignent or unique solution to a particular problem or be the first to publish a particular tutorial, no matter how arcane the subject. Women seem to be (generally) more work focused - thus they spend less time trying to be popular. Case in point (from Eris Free)
"Getting noticed is easy if you do and say all the right things, but then what are you noticed for? Not for yourself, just for how well you play a part. Being noticed by this community and/or being successful in this community are not things on my list of what I deem as successful. So my concept of self-promotion may not be the same as other designers or other people."
Jim Amos (http://graphikjunkie.com/)
Apparently not, Eris :)
This topic could go on for years, I don't get how everyone can generalise and say "men do this" and "women do that", because there's a hell of a lot of exceptions to those stereotypes.
No gender is better than the other at design or development, same for anything in life.
It's amazing how everyone wants people to be treated equally, yet at the same time everyone is quick to point out supposed "differences" between the genders.
Who cares how many women are on your team, who cares if nobody every finds out where the disabled designers are and would it make much difference at all if suddenly 100 women posted on here saying "we're designers" - not at all.
There are millions and millions of factors affecting why you choose a certain career in life and there's millions of reasons why someone wouldn't want to be "known".
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
Hey, I'm Asian and a woman in this field! :-)
Though I believe in discussion and promotion of issues like gender and racial equality, focusing on the issue like it's an excuse for the lack of direction or drive in your life or career is bullshit. I think perpetuating that women and ethnicities as a separate specialized group that always needs attention (though I do believe support for them is needed) is ridiculous.
My friends and I never took gender or ethnicity into question when we entered predominantly white male-dominated careers (my friends are learning to be engineers and doctors). We entered because we were smart enough and up for the challenge. Same reasons why a man would enter them. :-P
Meanwhile, I also have a comment on perception. Before you (Scrivy-poo!) even showed your pic in your about page, I have to frankly say I thought you were some nerdy but intelligent white guy in his late twenties, early thirties--largely because you love conservative, clean looking layouts and judging by the high quality of your content and projects.
Ahem. I, too, am guilty of judgemental behaviour.
I think THAT type of stereotype needs to be broken more than the women and ethnicities debate. I, too, can show pictures such as yours in this entry--I find it interesting that there's a perception that anyone in the computer field is married to their job and have no life (or are horridly unattractive).
Yes, I'm young and pretty, and I too like to party! ;-) I am 21! P.S. I'm also intelligent, have been judged to be gifted, and well-spoken (when need be, haha) I also work in a very conservative security company in Canada, making conservative (yet attractive) design materials (print and web) plus I just recently bought my first condo.
Did being a young, ethnic female minority stop me from well... being successful? Not at all. Does being a young, ethnic female minority hinder me from getting ahead? If I don't believe it will, it won't.
Couldn't tell that from my blog, now could ya? ;-)
Lea (http://xox.lealea.net/01/)
And there I was thinking you were a one legged hispanic gypsy woman!
Seriously though, I love the fact that it doesn't matter who or what you are. Your race ,gender and location don't mean a thing in this arena and long may that last.
P.S. I do the same thing to my Heineken labels, does this mean something?
Adrian Rinehart-Balfe (http://www.boogenstein.com/)
I've seen almost nothing but the opposite of what you all are complaining about in my career. At my first job, my team had just about every ethnic group except for white males (I'm Hispanic). Maybe I worked in the Bizarro world (hey, it was a strange company sometimes ;-) ).
Vinnie Garcia (http://blog.vinniegarcia.com/)
If such things are truly an irrelevent factor, then why do we talk about them and consider them?
Let me see if I can explain my frustrations with this. Is anyone here familiar with the "racial colorblind" pro/con argument? Some people say that it is good to be "colorblind" regarding ethnicity and such. Some people (usually the minorities in question) say that its not so good to be racially colorblind. The general reasoning is that when you are "colorblind", you don't see the whole person, you ignore a part of what makes them who they are. Being racially colorblind means that you see everyone as the same color, and that default color is usually your own. You're essentially substituting the parts of another person that society has told you it is wrong to "see" and are replacing it with your own parts.
In this case, it is a "gender blindness", which the majority of you guys think is just great and dandy and proactive. But it mostly means that you're taking away the parts of us women that you've been told not to "see" and replacing it with your own. You're trying to see us as guys. Which we are not.
Gender and Ethnicity are not issues that need to be treated like this. And it is rather insulting to put things into "equal but separate" groupings. Robert said upthread, " it singles them out like they should be treated differently". And that sums up how I feel quite accurately.
It isn't about being genderblind or colorblind and reducing everyone around you to a common denominator that you can deal with. It is about seeing it openly and without prejudice and preconceptions.
There are times when someone's gender or ethnicity will come into play in the professional world. For example, if I'm designing a site that is targeted at women, who do I want on my team to help design it? Women. It isn't being sexist, it is about knowing your target audience. There are just some things that women know that men don't. If I'm doing a site targeted at men, I'm going to get men on my team.
This is one of the reasons I made that post about Blogger's all-male template design team. Because the majority of Blogger's users are not male, they're female. And very few of the templates that were designed seemed to consider that fact. Someone said upthread that most of the time male designers, in an attept to make a feminine design, will just end up doing something pink.
Most girls aren't that fond of pink.
There's a time and a place to take gender and ethnicity into consideration. Just as, in your previous entry, there's a time and a place to be professional and be personal.
okay, longest.comment.ever.
sorry.
Eris (http://erisfree.com)
I do web design and I'm a girl. And I hate pink. A lot.
You may find this interesting -- We recently went through a major hiring phase at my job. I'm a web programmer, and the majority of the applicants for my job were female. The majority of the applicants for the graphic designer positions were male. How's that for breaking stereotypes?
theresa (http://www.dandelionwine.org)
Hehe, see. I don't like pink either.
To further make the point regarding the dismissivness of "separate but equal", and though I hate to pick on Andrei, in his most recent "bloggers vs. gurus" he made a point to mention the fact that he added women this time! Whee! Except that he pitted the women against each other. Now, why was that? Why couldn't a girl blogger go up against a male guru?
What kind of message does that send out? That yes, women can compete, but lets give them someone on their "level"? Lets have the girls do the bendy-knee pushups just because they're girls and therefore somehow "less strong"?
And, Andrei probably didnt even realize what he'd essentially done with that particular segregation. 1.) he had to actually make an effort to add women designers to the contest and then 2.) he separated them. Why even add them at all if you're not going to give them a fair go? Why not just choose based on the quality of their work, what does their gender have to do with a competition like that?
I know, I know, B-vs-G is all fun and games. But its a small-scale sample of a larger issue. It's an example of when it's a bad idea to "see" someone as the Gender/Ethnicity first and then the Talent/Skill second.
Eris (http://erisfree.com)
(damn, i'm being added to enemy lists left and right, i'm pretty sure. sorry folks, this is just one of those 'hot topics' for me. button pushing and all that.)
Eris (http://erisfree.com)
Most girls aren't that fond of pink.
I think my daughter is making up for those who don't like pink. She wants pink everything. She's 3.5, so that might have something to do with it.
Oh, and Eris: You're on my list. :P
Matthew Oliphant (http://businesslogs.com)
Not at all, Eris. You made some valid points, making what would be a nice conclusion - if this post would ever end.
I feel quite strongly about this as well, there's absolutely no need to apologise for what you said.
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
Now I'm confused. Yesterday you're concerned about whether you are seen as a professional, and today you post pictures of you being a "playa."
The many personalities of whitespace...
Clint
Eris, you absolutely have valid points... ;-)
I don't necessarily believe in "blindness" and I don't like the word "tolerance" either. Blindness and tolerance is just about ignorance and insinuates that differences are something that is "tolerated" like you would a collicky child.
Like you said, "It is about seeing it openly and without prejudice and preconceptions."
That's why I believe discussion is needed, but I don't believe that drawing attention to yourself only because you're a female or of ethnic minority to complain about life is right.
Lea (http://xox.lealea.net/01/)
I agree that using your gender/ethnicity as an excuse for your lack of success is not highly regarded. I don't know of anyone in this community who's done that. If I turn out to be a failure in something, it isn't going to be because of my gender. (its probably going to be because I did something stupid) ;)
Eris (http://erisfree.com)
I've heard plenty of people do that, Eris. Sometimes they're even right (Particularly gender.. I know some very sharp women who've hit the glass ceiling and had to spend years breaking through it)
Far more often, though, I hear other people using it as an excuse for others... and I think that hurts people. If you give people an expectation that they won't succeed because of their appearance, and they buy into it, it's obviously going to have some effect... why try when you have a ready made excuse. But that doesn't apply so much to motivated people, anyway.
The issue is blurred as discussed here, I think. A persons ethnicity or gender can be a tremendous part of who they are, and as a person, it would be idiotic to ignore that part of their lives... but it's not going to make them predisposed to be better or worse at most job skills (ones requiring specific strength/size/dexterity that apply more directly to men or women, or intelligence positions that require specific ethnicity aside). So an employer SHOULD be color/gender blind, so far as selecting a candidate and judging their job performance. But that doesn't mean they should ignore that one employee has to pray 5 times a day, another cannot eat pork products, a third can only eat fish on fridays. But that's of no greater or lesser significance than the fourth one who's allergic to peanuts or the fifth one who has small children and can't travel out of town.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Obviously... given the essay length commentary from Eris on this article, she was being coy when she first said, "Okay, now, is this topic officially done yet?"
Anyhow... to resond to this point:
"Why even add [women] at all if you're not going to give them a fair go? Why not just choose based on the quality of their work, what does their gender have to do with a competition like that?"
There's a build up of things that happen for me, both as a designer and as a writer, and the hardest part about a blog is that it's real-time. People are seeing me learn in real time, whether my audience knows it or not.
As such, my process for learning has a lot more to do with the real reasoning behind the G v. B piece pitting women up against each other than whatever you think it might be. DxF has been live only six months, and is very much a tool for me to expand a certain aspect of my design brain.
I had mapped out in my head a way to make G v. B go five more iterations... Although I'll probably stop at three. In those iterations, I take things in stages, progressively notching up from what I have learned to work from previous versions. In order to do this, I had mental rules to work with to keep the article simple, keep it focused as a writing exercise for me personally.
My rules always start out very black and white, and very simplistic. It's just the way I do things. I stick to things at the most basic levels before graduating to the next. For me as a writer, I found that keeping simple A v B rules with the article kept it easy for me to find out what people responded to.
Example: Maeda and Fry. One is a teacher, the other his student.
That was the rule. That was the main rule for that little set-up. Once I knew I wanted to use Maeda as a guru, I then figure out the competitor based on a rule, like this. Then I figured out how to write something that made a point, even forcing a point if I initially didn't find one.
Why did I put a few female bloggers up against female gurus? Because I'm simple minded. Guilty as charged.
But I did it for my benefit to stay focused as a writer. I first knew I wanted to use Laurel and then needed to find a blogger. I focused on another woman because it was an easy rule for me to use to work through the article. I chose Veerle because she was a woman as well up against Christina, although I also wanted to make a point about menu navigation schemes and had always like the way Veerle had set up a combo left sidebar that had multiple ways to navigate her site.
Maybe I stuck to close to my simple rules. But I did this not for your benefit as the reader, but for mine as a writer.
Once I begin to figure out what lines I can cross without being offensive, what I can say that people found funny but didn't find mean spirited, or what kind of comparisons I can make that also makes a point, I move to the next level.
The next level is not being so simplstic about those rules, and things will progress. I already have in my head how to mix it up a lot in G v. B round 3. I'm getting there, but I'm doing on my schedule, not anyone elses. (Although my schedule tends to be far quicker than most, imho.)
For the record, if it mattered, it should be known that while I was in charge of the UI team at Adobe, some co-workers (mostly male engineers) noted I had hired more women on my team than men. I never noticed really myself, as I found myself hiring designers, just that many of them happened to be women. Doesn't matter to me.
Andrei Herasimchuk (http://www.designbyfire.com)
Hey all :)
It is odd that it is many women designers themselves who differentiate themselves based on there sex.
http://www.womendesignersgroup.com/
I do not think it is good at all to ignore race and sex in any field. Take a walk down your local 'restaurant' street. It is full of diverstity. Diversity brought about by different cultures. It is exactly the fact that they are different that makes it so exciting.
The different sexes sell to each other better. A woman will sell to a man better than another man and visa versa. At one time I was a bouncer in London, fights all the time, the usual garbage. The 2 best bouncers in London were 2 ladies. You might imagine they were huge disgusting feminazis but the realities were very different. They were the soft gentle feminine type. They would use that to calm the guys down. It was incredibly effective. In effect, they sold the idea, using their sex, of not fighting to the guys. We can apply this same thinking to web design, depending ofcourse on the design needs.
Enjoy the diversity of race and sex. There is a world of colour out there because of it :)
Stay safe!
Bruce
Bruce Tritton (http://www.bodyimagedesigns.com)
Like I said, I didn't mean to pick on you, Andrei, it was just one of the more recent examples that I found.
And I said that you probably hadn't even realized what you'd done and the message it sent out to some of us. I think the sticking point for me with regard to that competition was how you even went so far as to brag about the fact that you'd added girls, but then threw them against each other. I don't compete with other girl designers. I compete with other Designers, period.
But, now you're a step ahead of most guys because you recognize how you segregate girl designers in your mind. And just being aware of how we inadvertantly think about things is sometimes all thats needed to not continue doing it.
Eris (http://erisfree.com)
I'd like to see more action and less talk from the women designers. I know this will probably get me flamed, Eris, but all I've seen up until now is a lot of criticism of the way male designers handle things (scrivs commented this..., Andrei made such and such...) and we don't see the women stepping up to the plate.
I know a lot of women designers have stated that they are more work focused than "rant focused". Still, they're criticizing the outlook of their male counterparts, so I think it's only fair that they start making some noise of their own rather than just watching from the sidelines (and voicing their indignation/concern).
Sergio (http://overcaffeinated.net)
All I wanted to say with my post was that it seemed like ladies were more visible "in the community" back in table-based layout rather than with the more recent standards-based/CSS layout.
As to the why, I'm not sure it matters. What matters is that my work is consistent, beautiful and technologically current.
Thanks for an interesting discussion.
helenjane (http://www.helenjane.com)
Articles, Eris. I mean more articles written by women. More of the kind that you're criticizing. Written with the view of the female perspective.
I know you're writing a lot in your site, and I read your posts and find them very insightful, but somehow there are very few essays by women that gain the notoriety of "A better tightey whitey" or "Gurus vs Bloggers", and I'm sure this had a lot to do with the fact that none of the Blogger template designers were women (notoriety being the thing they all shared, besides being great designers). Flawed though that criteria may be, just pointing it out won't change things. We need outspoken female designers if things are to change.
Sergio (http://overcaffeinated.net)
I hate people ranting about either gender. Feminists and male chauvanists do my head in.
If women want to speak up they will, but will it matter if they don't? Not really. This field of expertise will continue to go from strength to strength no matter which gender leads the way.
I couldn't care less who writes a book/article, aslong as it's written.
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
my head exploded about five comments ago. (you wouldn't want me to write whats in my head right now anyways, trust me)
Eris (http://erisfree.com)
Explanation of my previous post: Does it honestly matter whether a woman or a man created an article and distributed it online? It won't mean the article is better, it won't mean the article has a certain sexiness about it - no, it will just be a load of words correctly structured by someone who has a lot of talent.
Refraining from swearing - It's amazing how the people who don't want to be treated differently actually DO want to be treated differently.
If a woman wrote an article on the advantages of storing data in xml files rather than in a database - I honestly wouldn't care what gender she is, just the fact that she's a damn talented person, the same way i'd bloody treat a man or an extremely intelligent chimpanzee.
Geez, now i'm going to have to start filtering my emails checking for the words "die", "typical man" and "gay boy", JUST because it doesn't matter to me which damn gender is writing some articles.
Before anyone comments about their hatred for me, sit back and re-read what I wrote.
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
Have we officially jumped the shark now?
I'm *so* not getting into this kind of discussions again...
Sergio (http://overcaffeinated.net)
I did not comment when this article was started (except #13. False sig just for football fans;) because whitespace is predominantly about web design and the comments had moved towards feminism. Feminism and gender are very misunderstood by both sexes and debates inevitably become very long. But after another discussion on Eris's blog, I felt I had to say something as a man in defence of feminism and to state that we should all care about the male female balance in web design.
When someone says they are 'trying to forget about gender' they really mean that they are happy with the status quo and don't want to make any changes, probably because they fear it would lessen their comfort level. This generally applies to most men but also those women who are privileged enough to have a comfortable lifestyle. I also detected a distinct discomfort about "feminists". I think this discomfort is simply because of basic misunderstanding of what the term should really mean. I think if we all shared a similar understanding of the term, then many comments would have been said differently. To this end I have defined feminism on my blog, in the hope you will all read it and lose a few misconceptions.
Peter (http://www.01010.org/)
"the best policy for men is to accept that 99% of the time the woman is probably right and if we think we know better we are probably on an ego trip or something"
The is the thing that angered me and probably many others (who've read that entry), Peter.
But then again, i'm only right 1% of the time.
Then again, you might not have meant it like that. I apologise to those that are fed up of this topic *apologises to himself*.
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
Robert - I explained about the 99% on Eris's blog. As you say, I didn't really mean it like that, just as you probably didn't mean some of your comments the way they came across. We live and learn!
Peter (http://www.01010.org)
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#1
Dude, take your arm off of me! I ain't no hussy.
Mike (http://phark.typepad.com)