Women in the creative world are finally getting some of the recognition they deserve — at least in the cultural domain.
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This fall alone, expect one of the most comprehensive new books on female designers, a book about the unsung heroines of graphic design, and a book about designing motherhood. In London, the Tate Modern is doing a retrospective of Swiss renaissance woman Sophie Taeuber-Arp (the exhibition will go to the Museum of Modern Art in November). And in Weil-am-Rhein, the Vitra Design Museum is showcasing over 80 women who have the shaped the furniture, fashion, industrial, and interior design worlds over the past 120 years.
For many women highlighted in this exhibition – and in the flurry of books we’re seeing on the subject – acknowledgement comes almost a century late, but it brings long-overdue recognition that is essential for the next generation of designers. Lest we forget, women make up over half of designers today, yet discrimination and gender bias continue to plague the industry. In 2019, women held only 11% of leadership roles in the design field.
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Louise Brigham, Box Furniture. How to Make a Hundred Useful Articles for the Home, 1919. [Photo: Vitra Design Museum]“The development of design as a practice as we understand it coincides with the time where women get a lot more rights,” says Viviane Stappmanns, who curated the Vitra exhibition along with Nina Steinmüller and Susanne Graner. This bid for emancipation is reflected in the design produced in the early 20th century. In 1909, Louise Brigham pioneered the DIY movement with her book Box Furniture, a manual for amateur furniture makers. And some years before that, Jane Addams successfully lobbied for better urban sanitation, more playgrounds, and kindergartens throughout Chicago. Addams’s work would be described as social design today, but Stappmanns says her contribution to design is unqualified.
The road to equity has been long and winding, perhaps best symbolized by the visionary architect Denise Scott Brown’s decades-long quest for recognition alongside her partner, the influential architect, Robert Venturi. Denise Scott Brown is regarded as one of the most significant architects of the 20th century, both through her architecture and seminal writings, yet she was often overshadowed by her husband.
Sometimes, she says, language got in the way. The Japanese furniture designer Hasako Watanabi has produced a wide range of custom interiors and sculptural furniture and lighting designs, but very little information is available in English. (It’s unclear whether the same applies to male foreign designers.)
There’s also something else. The more women are recognized, the more visibility they get in the eyes of the next generation. “Role models are really important,” says Sellers. “They have a statistically significant impact on women’s performance in all fields.”
