Summary of His and Hers: Designing for a Post-Gender Society
Suzanne Tick, activist toward a post-gender society has several opinionated and objective views toward her beliefs and theories on the world today and how gender is a contributing factor in all area of human life especially in the modern workplace today. Suzanne Tick, writer of the article His and Hers: Designing for a Post-Gender Society argues how the workplace of corporate America is rooted and shaped by a predominantly male perspective. Ticks main purpose in her article discusses how traditional masculine and feminine roles are being challenged these days and how designers of different spaces should focus more on deigning spaces to feel more accepting and inviting with a feminine touch, especially because of how individuals now identify with a different gender than what they were born with.
As the article continuously states, the job career and world of technology and web design is a highly male dominated field, with eight five percent of tech workers at the top companies being male. With businesses such as these that are mainly worked and operated by men, the design of these prime spaces are usually geared towards making a comfortable and relaxing environment for men, but not women.
As we read throughout the article, we learn of new movements and events that are pushing the ideas of modernism and feminism into a more popular light. One in particular was the speech given by actress Emma Watson that went viral over the internet about her affiliations and promotions of the He for She movement. The He for She movement helps in promoting men to join the cause for gender equality and the current acceptance for same sex marriage.
Tick mainly states that with people associating with opposite genders in the modern world today, designers should take the effort in accommodating these individuals by more soft interiors and influences of hospitality and gender sensitivity. The main concepts learned from this article deal with the acceptance from different areas of society relating to this issue. “Alexander Wang’s women’s coat from Fall 2015 has masculine tailoring with a military look, while Annemiek van der Beek’s Primal Skin makeup line has been designed to be appealing to the male buyer”(Tick). This is a great example Suzanne Tick incorporated into her article to show readers that we are living in a new era of different industries accepting and modeling new products and ideas toward people that self-identify with the opposite sex such as the fashion and make up industry.
As some might be skeptical upon their first sight of this image, Suzanne Tick sides with having more unisex bathrooms in the workplace to let others know that their office and workplace is taking a progressive step forward in accommodating employees that are transgender. Since large well-known companies such as Google are slowly adopting gender-neutral and unisex bathrooms, other corporations have taken note of this change that is helping their employees feel safe and included in the workplace.
Tick concludes this article by restating that masculine and feminine roles are being switched and that they have drastically changed within the past few years because of the world’s progression toward a post gender world. We read and realize that there needs to be a change in the overall design of spaces in order to be respectful and open to creating environments in which people can express their own individuality regardless of gender.