![Intersecting axes of privilege, domination, and oppression. Adapted from Morgan, 1996 [27] (p. 107).](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sonia-Rafael/publication/370173618/figure/fig1/AS:11431281153071571@1682327695683/Intersecting-axes-of-privilege-domination-and-oppression-Adapted-from-Morgan-1996_Q320.jpg)
Content uploaded by Sónia Isabel Ferreira dos Santos Rafael
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Sónia Isabel Ferreira dos Santos Rafael on Apr 24, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
The problem with gender-blind design and how we might begin
to address it
A model for intersectional feminist ethical deliberation
Ana O. Henriques
Centro de Investigação e de Estudos em Belas-Artes
(CIEBA), Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Universidade de Lisboa,
Lisbon, Portugal
ana.gfo.henriques@campus.ul.pt
Sónia Rafael
ITI / LARSyS, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Universidade de
Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
srafael@campus.ul.pt
Victor M Almeida
Centro de Investigação e de Estudos em Belas-Artes
(CIEBA), Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Universidade de Lisboa,
Lisbon, Portugal
v.almeida@belasartes.ulisboa.pt
José Gomes Pinto
Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture,
and New Technologies (CICANT)Universidade Lusófona
de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisbon, Portugal
jgomespinto@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Gender-blind design hinges upon an assumption that designing
equally is the same as designing for equality. That, however, is
inaccurate, as gender-blindness is merely a synonym for neutrality.
Neutrality, because it lacks a concerted eort to subvert, favors
hegemonic values and epistemologies, which counters the pur-
ported aim of equality. Supposedly objective methods of analysis,
such as data gathering and interpreting, are not deprived of this
hegemonic bias either. As such, through an acknowledgment of
ethics, the designer must recognize that they are, indeed, imbu-
ing their values into their designs, which bears inuence on the
ways in which the user interacts and interprets those designs, a
notion which is especially relevant to a eld concerned with user
experience. This may be done deliberately or by accident, but it
is always inevitable. Ethics is, in this way, inextricable from the
design process, and, thus, the present article aims to propose that
designing for equality requires the designer to act as an ethical
agent — responsibly, consciously, and knowingly — especially if
one hopes to avoid a design which embodies and communicates
oppressive notions. In particular, within the purview of ethics, and
by making use of some case-studies and examples, it argues that
designing toward gender equality requires not the more typical
gender-blind approach, but rather one which is specically gender-
conscious. Further, this article also oers some suggestions as to
how we might begin to act as ethical design agents and implement
marginalized epistemologies into the design process.
CCS CONCEPTS
•Human-centered computing
→
Interaction design; Interaction
design theory, concepts and paradigms.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed
for prot or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation
on the rst page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored.
For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany
©2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9422-2/23/04.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3582750
KEYWORDS
Ethics, Gender-Blind Design, Feminist Design, Conceptual Model
ACM Reference Format:
Ana O. Henriques, Sónia Rafael, Victor M Almeida, and José Gomes Pinto.
2023. The problem with gender-blind design and how we might begin to
address it: A model for intersectional feminist ethical deliberation. In Ex-
tended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI EA ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New
York, NY, USA, 12 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3582750
1 INTRODUCTION
The present article is intended to oer an intersectional feminist
critique of the gender-blind tendencies permeating design theory
and practice which fail to accommodate not just women but, indeed,
any identity which deviates from the presumed male norm of the
so-called ‘average’ or ‘ideal’ user. It is meant both as a denounce-
ment of these embedded practices and a call for a more inclusive
approach through a model proposal for an explicitly feminist ethical
deliberation within the design process.
In focusing on gendered oppression within the design space —
and only on some of its intersections — we do not wish to disre-
gard any of the other seriously important factors which constitute
underrepresented factions within design discourse. We are fully
aware that, for some, issues such as class or race may constitute a
greater priority, and that comprehensive and resonant analyses of
how all these identities interact are not just necessary but urgent.
We are also aware that issues of gender, as well as some of their
intersections within the matrix of domination, do not occur nor
interact in a vacuum. They are part of a larger and more complex
network of oppression which politically and systematically bounds
all these marginalized epistemologies and value systems within
each other, making a single-issue analysis, albeit constructive, still,
inevitably, incomplete. Nonetheless, gender is a useful place to start
exploring the oppression design is complicit in — not least in be-
ginning to search for frameworks for gender liberation through
ubiquitous design processes which permeate our lives, cultures,
and societies. It must also be said unequivocally that gendered op-
pression does not solely mean the oppression of cisgender women.
CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany Ana Henriques et al.
In this pursuit, we must aim for knowledge and awareness re-
garding our own understanding of the oppression hierarchies and
power dynamics in which we participate. Only in so doing may
we be able to avoid communicating and reproducing these same
hegemonic values and priorities which hinder the lives of so many
real people.
Hence, this work, as an incremental contribution which builds
on important previous work, hopes to propose a process whereby
exhaustive ethical deliberation, in all its intersecting forms, becomes
an explicit and integral a priori step of the design process. By
centering marginalized epistemologies as an ethic unto itself, this
approach hopes to provide some direction as to how we may begin
to produce designed products, services, and spaces that are inclusive
rather than exclusionary.
2 FEMINIST ETHICS AND THE DESIGN
PROCESS
2.1 The relationship between ethics and design
Design, more than a single discipline or set of practices segregated
by medium, is, as argues Ezio Manzini, above all, a process by and
through which we shape and, in turn, perceive the world in which
we dwell [
1
]. Design, in this way, implies some form of “material
(re)conguration” [
2
] in service of a specic intended outcome.
This outcome, as such, requires purpose. In the words of Herbert
Simon, to design is to “[devise] courses of action aimed at changing
existing situations into preferred ones” [
3
] (p. 111). In this way,
design is also concerned with communicating meaning within the
context of the society by and for which it designs.
Thus, as argues Ece Canlı, the reciprocity of design, as something
which is both, and simultaneously, reconguring and being recon-
gured, is crucial to an understanding of the eects and outcomes
thereby produced [
2
]. All designed things are designed as a product
of a desired outcome, originating from some interaction between
outcome, process, and agent. In return, as Canlıwrites, “all designed
things (from artifacts, spaces, sites, technologies, images to sartorial,
digital, medical and cyber instruments)
. . .
act back and recongure
the world;” and, in so doing, also our “identities, selves,
. . .
our
everyday lives, environments, social structures, politics, relation-
ships, movements, habits, value judgments and so forth [
2
] (p. 11).
Design, as such, is invariably guided by the values and assumptions
we hold, which are themselves based on what we consider to be
legitimate knowledge. This is reected in the way we think, what
we think about, the values we prioritize, and, inevitably, in those
that we reproduce. This may be done more or less consciously, but
it is unavoidable. To design, thus, requires one to act deliberately
on some desired intent to create some alternative conception, and
also a vision as to how.
This is, in its very essence, an ethical matter. The question of
which design solution is the best is, at its core, a question of which
is the best choice, or set of choices. Decisions such as these — about
what to do, what not to do, what should one do; what is right, and
what is wrong — are all under the purview of ethics, it being the
branch of philosophy that deals with the bases for those decisions.
In this way, ethics is concerned with all facets of the human experi-
ence — from the individual to the conglomerate. Accordingly, the
importance in informing which design choices are best becomes
apparent. The issue, of course, then becomes what we dene as
‘best.’ Notions of ‘good’ can vary wildly based on what we choose
to prioritize, and though the prompts may be simple, the answers
are far from easy in their contingency. Especially when dealing
with an imbalance of power/knowledge [
4
] regarding marginalized
epistemologies.
Any truly ethical deliberation process must account for those
power dynamics, hence why an intersectional feminist framework
is especially appropriate. A feminist ethics will, by design, by cog-
nizant of the notion of power; especially that concerning episte-
mology. This is useful as it includes an analysis of both the power
imbalances and the invisibility of the exercises of power, which
helps in contextualizing the pervasive silencing, absence, dierence,
and gendered oppression [
5
] in all its intersecting forms while still
remaining conscious of the relationality inherent to any delibera-
tion process.
A feminist perspective can thus be used to great eect as a vehicle
of critique for HCI by integrating feminist values within its dis-
course and allowing for the development of alternative approaches
to design theory and practice. Accordingly, there is a growing body
of work intent on incorporating feminist concerns within design
literature
1
. An excellent example is the work of Shaowen Bardzell,
in which she delves into how feminist theories and praxes can apply
to HCI theory, methodology, user research, and evaluation [7].
Feminist epistemology also expands on the idea of standpoint.
Donna Haraway’s concept of ‘situated knowledges’ has become a
key aspect of feminist theory which describes knowledge that is
partial and locatable rather than global and transcendent [
8
]. In
this way, Haraway denounces the objectivity/relativism binary that
has been detrimental to the feminist project. Objectivity is typi-
cally taken as an impartial perspective under the guise of neutrality
which begets a power dynamic rooted in the purportedly univer-
sal hegemony of maleness and whiteness and gender-normativity
[
8
] that denies the subjective. In the same way, as relativism is
denied any averment of objectivity, all standpoints stand as equally
constructed and thus annul any pretense of hegemonic objectivity.
In contrast with the dominant epistemological tradition, feminist
epistemologists tend to focus on the impact of a social locus. Indeed,
standpoint theory deals with exactly this [
9
]. A standpoint in not
inherited but achieved, and stems from active political engagement
with the feminist cause. “In other words, political participation
distinguishes the standpoint from perspective” [10] (p. 2).
2.2 Why it matters
The stark absence of women, queer, trans*
2
, intersex and gender-
nonconforming people in the design space creates a gendered semi-
otic imbalance, whereby a dominant normative maleness is more
highly valued when compared to any alternative [
12
]. This con-
tributes further to a design culture which outputs goods and ser-
vices that do not serve the needs of anyone but the hegemonic
default, occasionally even actively incurring in harmful actions
[13].
1See, for example, Prado de O. Martins, 2014 [6].
2
Following Jack Halberstam’s reasoning, we will be using “trans*” instead of “trans” or
any other variant throughout this document. This is meant to highlight the lack of any
singular category or denition for a trans identity, arguing further for the boundless
uidity of gender identication [11].
The problem with gender-blind design and how we might begin to address it CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany
Design, though it has largely been driven by principles of us-
ability, ergonomics, eciency, or functionality, has not so much
been informed by a deeper understanding of ethics, even though
they are inherently interconnected [
14
]. This matters because de-
signing according to any particular value system communicates
that one places value on that system. Design is not neutral. It can’t
ever be. Designs are “things with attitudes,” [
15
] (p. 12) — capable
of ethical and political agency — which cannot be divorced from
individual as well as collective human values
3
[
14
]. Design as a
whole, under the lens of post-colonial feminist analysis, is heavily
biased in favor of a Euro- and androcentric hegemony [
17
] [
18
] [
6
]
[
19
]. This is reective of the limitations of the design institution,
and inevitably inuences not just which design is practiced and
reproduced, but also the surrounding systems and institutions that
are seen as legitimate; and, hence, those we should emulate and
aspire to.
All design is political, and profoundly so [
10
] [
20
] [
21
]. As posits
Mahmoud Keshavarz, neither can be divorced from the other and
should be understood not as separate but as “nexus” — as “design-
politics
4
” [
21
] (p. 93). This, he argues, is in spite of the distinct
manner in which they deal with their settings, as, above all, both
constitute material formulations which “congure possibilities of
acting in a given situation” [
21
] (p. 93). This, as Keshavarz argues,
ought to highlight not how they behave as distinct elds of knowl-
edge and practice but what and how, together, design-politics “pro-
duces, performs and generates” — as well as on the weight of this
political responsibility [
21
] (p. 76). Every instance of design, accord-
ing to Tony Fry, “either serves or subverts the status quo” [
20
] (p.
88), as it has the potential to generate both stale design towards
detrimental hegemonic endurance, or activist design
5
as a catalyst
for systemic change [
10
]. Design activism can be a particularly use-
ful instrument in this regard, as it carries with it unique qualities
distinguishing it from strictly political and art activism. “Specically,
the generative nature of design raises the question of how design
activists engage in criticizing dominant power relations while at
the same time arming the dominant politics through their design
contributions” [
10
] (p. 2). This becomes especially relevant within
the context of HCI — and, indeed, design as a whole. If designed
artifacts hold and communicate ethics/politics [
14
] [
15
], so too do
any potential activist artifacts with transformative potential.
In this way, design holds a lot of sociocultural inuence, in both
its subtlety and its overtness. As asserts Sanford Kwinter, in ad-
dition to Keshavarz [
21
], the Foucauldian notion of how power
wields control over bodies
6
has been evolving to become more indi-
rect [
23
]. Now, Kwinter argues, that power is increasingly exerted
3
There are numerous ways in which a design, whatever shape it may take, can embody
and bespeak the ethical decisions that were made in its conception. See Friedman and
Kahn, 2002 [16].
4
Keshavarz describes his understanding of design-politics as being similar to Foucault’s
power-knowledge binomial [
4
], describing it as the origin of the term “nexus” to
describe the concept [
21
]. Thus, according to him, delineating a design-politics is a
way of both embodying and describing the numerous ways in which politics and
design have historically and materially upheld and strengthened one another [21].
5
Alastair Fuad-Luke dened design activism as “design thinking, imagination and
practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at
generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and economic
change” (p. 27) [22].
6
Throughout his work, Foucault dwells a lot on the ways in which external power
structures produce subjects; that is, in how regimes of social control exert power —
and thus control. In Discipline and Punish, for example, he describes how disciplinary
predominantly through the interfaces [
23
]. This is, of course, of
particularly prescient concern for a eld such as HCI [
7
], and, thus,
it is vital that we consider the ethics upon which we design these
interfaces. Frameworks for ethical decision-making all raise queries
with deep political implications. ‘Neutral design’ is paradoxical;
it cannot exist. Some ideology must be presumed because it is al-
ways there, regardless of how unintentional [
5
], because the belief
systems therein imbued are not either — our belief systems. See,
again, standpoint theory [
8
] [
9
]. “Artifacts have politics” [
25
] (p. 1).
That, however, does not mean that designers necessarily recognize
themselves as political agents, or even that they recognize the polit-
ical urgency of design [
20
]. A neutral design approach is anything
but. What it is, instead, is blind to all the intersecting systems of
oppression which exist at the margins of hegemony [
26
] [
27
] (see
Figure 1).
Even with the best of intentions, one can perpetuate these op-
pressive systems unknowingly, and likewise, also the oppression
they communicate. This is the problem with neutral design. It ig-
nores the needs of those whose epistemologies are not valued and
thereby produces inadequate solutions biased in favor of hegemonic
priorities. Specically, as it relates to gender parity, we see this kind
of gender-neutral approach everywhere, but it is oblivious to the
crucial dierence between designing equally and designing for
equality.
Everything — from datasets to user interfaces to urban spaces —
is designed according to, and thus reinforcing, binary, androcentric
and cisnormative bodily congurations. Any deviation from that
norm is deemed an outlier, and the real people this aects — largely
women, queer, trans*, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people
— are, in this way, regularly subjected to an increased amount of
harm and harassment [
28
]. Moreover, Racialized People and People
with Disabilities are particularly vulnerable to such systematic bias
and are often at a higher risk of harm from a system that was not
designed with them in mind [
26
] — one created under a hegemonic
set of norms, values, and assumptions which are imbued therein,
and subsequently reproduced and unchallenged.
One wouldn’t assume that exclusionary things are so by design,
but they often are, regardless of intent. Instead, what is most of-
ten the cause is even simpler — not even thinking about it in the
rst place. When we design ‘neutral’ or ‘ideal’ systems that use
ignorance to set the boundaries of what is relevant, we ineluctably
restrict those boundaries to the limits of our own ignorance [
29
].
This is how the ’ideal neutral’ ends up reinforcing and reproducing
hegemonic values and assumptions [
29
]. The failure to consider the
full context and implications of these actions, as well as our own
role in perpetuating them [
5
], means that many design actions are
being directed not by intentionality, but by a lack of insight [
20
].
This leads us to an important question: how can we research issues
pertaining to power and propose solutions to mitigate oppression
techniques produce “docile bodies” in order to make them more compliant and pro-
ductive [
24
]. In History of Sexuality, which immediately followed the latter, Foucault
introduced the concept of ‘biopower,’ which seizes the modern forms of power aimed at
living beings by holding them subject to standards of not just sexual but also biological
normality [
24
]. Through these works, one can subsume the larger issue of individual
agency. Not only is there an exerted control enacted through other people’s knowledge
of individuals, but also one exercised in an individual’s knowledge of themselves,
through these power relations dictated by hegemonic sociocultural institutions.
CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany Ana Henriques et al.
Figure 1: Intersecting axes of privilege, domination, and oppression. Adapted from Morgan, 1996 [27] (p. 107).
when we, as researchers and designers, are complicit in perpetu-
ating these same hegemonic biases? The proposed answer, which
the present article hopes to articulate, is that we do so through an
explicitly intersectional feminist approach to careful ethical delib-
eration as an integral part of the design process. From our choice of
standpoint [
9
] to our theoretical bases, to our research design, data
collection and data analysis, to the manner in which we present
our ndings as well as how we act upon them.
3 GENDER-BLIND DESIGN
3.1 The male default
Simone de Beauvoir once wrote that “[r]epresentation of the world,
like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from
their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth”
[
30
] (p. 162). Indeed, specically as it relates to gender, design has
historically failed to factor in a sensible and equitable approach
within its process, producing designs which overwhelmingly favor
a normative male-dominated hegemony in ways that are often
invisible to those involved [
6
] [
7
] [
18
] [
19
] [
31
]. Numerous products,
spaces or services have, inadvertently or not, been designed to favor
a ‘neutral, average user,’ which, as discussed, heavily favors andro-
normative epistemologies and value systems to the detriment of all
that is not deemed valuable or legitimate within them.
In the words of Pierre Bourdieu: “what is essential goes without
saying because it comes without saying: the tradition is silent, not
least about itself as a tradition” [
32
] (p. 167). Maleness is presumed
— it goes without saying. It does not need to be announced or
accommodated for because it is the presumed default for which
we are designing [
31
]. This, however, can have a real impact and
concrete consequences in the lives of those who deviate from this
norm — those whose identities do not go without saying.
Bardzell contends that gender, because it carries inuence
through its expression in relationships and identities, does indeed
have an eect on how users interact with a designed product or
environment [
7
]. Further, she argues that design should incorpo-
rate not only philosophies of gender, but also those of social class,
sexuality, race, emotion, or desire [
7
] — its intersections. This, as
discussed above, is necessary so as to confront the hegemonic as-
sumption upon which design is predicated; especially the pervasive
idea that there is a universal, or ideal user [
7
]. Bardzell’s work,
through a focus on feminist theories and epistemologies, presents
us with the concept of a “marginal user” [
7
] (p. 1302), which she
introduces as a counterargument to the inherited conception that
there even is a universal one at all. As she propounds, “[a] key
feminist strategy is to denaturalize normative conventions, both
exposing their constructedness as human discourses situated in
sociopolitical institutions and exploring alternative approaches” [
7
]
(p. 1305).
The problem with gender-blind design and how we might begin to address it CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany
Indeed, from small pockets
7
to large phones
8
to chilling oce
temperatures
9
, gender-biased design and equipment have become
infused in every aspect of our lives. Though often invisible to those
designing, the ways in which this designed gender disparity per-
meates our lives go beyond merely annoying to become actively
harmful and even potentially life-threatening. Seemingly mundane
objects and experiences specically designed for a normative male
user are being deployed as such to a general public without re-
gard for their eects on women, queer, trans*, intersex and gender-
nonconforming people.
As an example, VR — an emerging technology in the HCI eld
which has seen a steady and ever-expanding increase in use and
development — largely does not serve women well. In addition to
headset rigs being too big, VR platforms have also been shown
to cause motion sickness at signicantly disparate rates between
men and women [
37
]. Research conducted as to why indicates
this is, again, likely an easily preventable design aw, stemming
from the fact that women’s interpupillary distance (IPD) tends to be
smaller than that of men [
37
]. IPD, essentially the distance measured
between one’s eyes, is an important measurement to account for,
as a failure to properly adjust one’s VR goggles to this distance has
been identied as the principal reason for such a gender disparity
regarding cyber motion sickness [
37
]. As such, according to these
same ndings, something as simple as providing a wider range of
IPD adjustability so that not just women but, indeed, all those who
do not fall within the accounted-for interval may also attain a good
t, could help in signicantly reducing the associated side-eect of
cybersickness in general [37].
This failure to account for female and non-normative bodies is
prevalent in all aspects of design and, by extension, designed society
at large. Another notable instance is that of work clothing. Uniforms
tend to come in a very limited range of sizes, which makes work
conditions more hostile and potentially even hazardous. The US
military, for instance, rst began recruiting women for exclusively
male combat units in the US Army, the Marine Corps, and the Navy
SEALs only in 2016 but failed to prepare proper-tting military
attire [
38
]. The Army did add eight smaller clothing sizes that year
but other important protective equipment such as boots and helmets
were neglected. This puts women at an “alarming [disadvantage],”
as argues former Democratic Congresswoman Niki Tsongas [
38
]
(para. 10). All military members who do not possess normative male
bodies are, thus, being left to nd ways to adapt their body armor to
t their frame and protect their organs, even if that means removing
7
An investigation conducted by The Pudding recently veried what we all already
knew — that clothes marketed to women have signicantly smaller pockets than
those for men — 48% smaller and 6.5% narrower to be exact [
33
]. The reason for this
impractical annoyance is, of course, anchored in political and historically rooted sexism
[34].
8
Smartphone designs have been steadily increasing in recent years, which can pose
as a problem for many women, whose hands are, on average, around 2.5cm smaller
than men’s [
31
] [
35
]. This, evidently, makes these phones harder to use for women
or just anyone with smaller hands. Further, these phones can also be harder to store,
given the above-mentioned reduced size of pockets in clothing marketed to women
[31] [33] [35].
9
Oce temperatures are typically standardized and regulated according to calculations
based on an assumed average male body of 40 years of age and 70kg [
36
]. A study
published in Nature, however, recently found that female metabolisms typically run
35% lower than the rate of males under that same calculation [
36
]. This, on average,
results in a preference gap of about 3ºC, with women preferring higher temperatures
than men [36].
protective side panels or adding extra padding to reposition pieces
of gear [
39
]. Further, the baggier uniforms also make it harder for
them to re their weapons eciently and even eectively [
38
] [
39
].
In eect, people are being sent into literal war zones in equipment
that was designed exclusively for normative men, which, ultimately,
presents an active risk of lethal injury on bodies which deviate from
the average male frame.
The erasure and disregard for female and non-normative
anatomy and biology are quite prevalent in medical training and
research as well [
40
]. As an example, a 2018 study concluded that,
in public locations, men are signicantly more likely to receive
bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (BCPR) when compared
to women, which is tied to a 23% increased chance of survival [
41
].
Though the researchers found that there was no pronounced gen-
der gap when it came to receiving CPR in private locations, they
postulate that the data collected suggests that women tend to re-
ceive this life-saving technique less often due to a general feeling of
discomfort regarding potentially having to touch a woman’s breasts
[
41
]. This problem is only exacerbated by the fact that ‘standard’
mannequins for CPR training are, of course, designed according to
an average male anatomy, and do not include breasts [
42
]. Even the
medical term for these such mannequins, Manikin, is quite telling.
To try and combat this issue, a group by the name of Womanikin cre-
ated the rst female CPR dummy. The product was designed as an
open-source add-on, making it possible for everyone to download
the pattern and attach it to any Manikin as an attempt to normalize
the administration of life-saving CPR on female bodies [42].
Even the way women use their cars is potentially life-threatening.
Compared to men, women tend to sit further forward and more up-
right. This is because, on average, women have shorter bodies with
shorter legs that need to reach the pedals, and shorter torsos that
need to see beyond the dashboard [
43
]. Because of this, the ways
in which women sit in the driver’s seat present a deviation from
the designed-for norm, which is based upon tests conducted with
crash dummies typically modeled after the average 50th percentile
male body [
44
]. This places not just women drivers, but also any
non-normative bodies in a signicantly more vulnerable position,
with a 47% greater risk of suering serious injuries than the average
male, and a 71% higher chance of incurring a moderate injury [
44
].
Either by robbing them of important career opportunities [
31
]
or even by willfully and knowingly placing them at great risk of
harm [
38
] [
39
] [
43
] [
44
], designs that ignore the needs of women,
queer, trans*, intersex and gender-nonconforming people are ubiq-
uitous. And it doesn’t matter whether this negligence is conscious
or not, because the consequences remain very real and potentially
very serious. From the annoying to the potentially lethal, we have
designed a world in which the average woman is an outlier — to
say nothing of trans* and gender-nonconforming identities.
We, quite simply, are not producing designs that work for others
as well as normative men. This issue runs deep, down to even the
data we collect. The already limited number of urban data sets, cou-
pled with the deep bias in data collecting and processing
10
, makes it
hard to develop infrastructure programs that factor in marginalized
10
As discussed earlier, seemingly objective automated systems are not neutral. The
Algorithmic Justice League collective has produced an expanding body of work docu-
menting the ways in which AI and Machine Learning technologies are intersectionally
biased [45].
CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany Ana Henriques et al.
needs. That said, when appropriate and comprehensive research
guided by an ethical impetus to do so is actually conducted, we nd
that it is indeed possible to design towards gender parity — which,
demonstrably, reveals that this is not a question of resources or
capability, but rather one of priorities.
Public ocials in Vienna, Austria, upon nding that girls’ pres-
ence in public parks signicantly decreased around the age of 10,
instead of ignoring the issue, decided to conduct an investigation
which resulted in the introduction of a few pilot programs in urban
park planning [
46
]. The results, unsurprisingly, did not indicate that
girls, as a group, didn’t enjoy parks. Instead, they found that single
large open spaces were the problem [
46
] [
47
]. This, they concluded,
was because these open spaces forced girls to compete with boys
for space, and, due to an ingrained patriarchal social conditioning,
girls, in general, lacked the condence to do so [
46
]. Viennese parks
were then divided into smaller sections
11
, which saw an increase
in girls’ attendance12 [46] [47].
In Malmö, Sweden, public ocials found a problem similar to that
of Viennese parks [
48
] [
49
]. They had set up a space for local youth
to engage in activities such as skating, climbing and grati, but
found that it was almost exclusively boys who were using the space
[
49
]. Luckily, they also decided to investigate and started by asking
girls what they wanted. The result was a well-lit space, sectioned
into a range of dierent-sized spaces on dierent levels [
49
]. It
worked; and, since then, two more spaces targeted specically at
girls have been developed in Malmö with great success [49].
All of these may seem like small changes, but they were success-
ful precisely because they were based on careful examination. It
must also be said that even these successful alternatives largely do
not account for identities beyond the normative and the binary, and
further research is necessary to account for this gap.
But what happens when we are presented with more complex
and potentially conicting ethical quandaries within the delibera-
tion process?
3.2 The bathroom: a case-study
Let us look, then, to bathrooms as a specic case-study of this
very problem. Women’s bathrooms often have signicantly longer
lines than those for men [
31
]. This may seem like a non-issue, and,
indeed, the tendency is to simply place the blame on the fact that
women just take longer. But, in reality, this is a preventable problem.
Specically, one of awed design borne out of exactly this inherited
hegemony of male-focused design.
At rst glance, it may seem fair to provide equal space to both
female and male public bathrooms, and this is, in fact, how it has
been done historically. This equal division of oor space has even
become embedded as a provision in numerous plumbing and sanita-
tion codes [
31
]. However, if a men’s bathroom has both cubicles and
urinals, the number of people who can use it at the same time is far
greater per square meter of oor space compared to the women’s
11
Please refer to [
46
] (p.205) for an image of the winning plan for the redesign of the
Einsiedlerpark in Vienna, Austria, by landscape architects’ practice Tilia.
12
This was also done for Viennese sports facilities for essentially the same reason
[
46
]. Girls weren’t using them because boys would tend to aggregate near the only
entrance and so they decided to create multiple entrances, instead of just one. They
also sectioned these spaces [46].
bathroom. And just like that, suddenly, equal oor space is not so
equal after all.
But even if male and female bathrooms had an equal number of
stalls, the problem still would not disappear. Women take up to 2.3
times longer than men to use the toilet [
50
]. They also make up the
majority of the elderly and disabled, two groups that tend to need
more time in the bathroom [
31
]. Women are also more likely to be
providing care for others, such as children or disabled and older
people [
51
]. Then there’s also the 20-25% of women of childbearing
age who may be on their period and in need of changing a tampon
or sanitary pad [
31
]. Women also tend to require more trips to the
bathroom. Pregnancy signicantly reduces bladder capacity [
31
],
and women are around 8 times more likely to suer from urinary
tract infections [52].
Considering all of this, it’s clear that this ‘neutral’ approach
to supposed equality is woefully inadequate. As such, the natural
next step is to ask what the solution to this problem is. On its
face, it seems rather obvious — make women’s bathrooms bigger
and add more stalls. Except this blanket solution is still lacking
signicant context. Namely, who we are including within the label
of womanhood. Jack Halberstam addressed this issue in Female
Masculinity [
11
]. Namely, how the bathroom has become a place
for policing gender, both legally and socially. He argues that even
having separate bathrooms for dierent genders is a problem, given
that those who do not clearly fall in either category have a very
hard time accessing and using public bathrooms without having to
deal with harassment of some sort [
11
]. Indeed, queer- and trans*-
exclusionary discourse around bathrooms does very little to nothing
at all to improve toilet access for the majority, but it does put trans*
and gender-nonconforming individuals at a greater risk of violence
when using these spaces [
53
]. Even further, this also contributes to
a dangerous and erroneous homogenization of womanhood.
So, is desegregating bathrooms the answer? Maybe. But it’s not
so simple. Research has shown that, even though desegregating
bathrooms is usually framed as an accommodation for trans* or
gender-nonconforming people, average waiting times for women
would actually decrease, and those for men would either not be
aected at all or would increase only slightly [
54
]. There are, how-
ever, still a few issues to contend with here, and one of the most
important is the potential for violence and harassment. And to
be clear, research has repeatedly shown that this such violence is
overwhelmingly perpetrated by cis men and largely against women,
queer, trans*, intersex and gender-nonconforming people, with an
even higher propensity associated with racial bias [
53
] [
55
]. This
is, of course, not to say that all men participate in this behavior,
nor that they are the only ones that do. However, the fact that a
non-insignicant portion does is something that cannot be ignored,
as it would leave women and queer and trans* and racialized and
disabled individuals more vulnerable to harassment. Thus, some
design strategies
13
would need to be developed to address this issue.
Indeed, there is some research being conducted on this front
and some of these strategies could include, for example, the use of
open spaces with individual ceiling-to-oor stalls instead of single
closed ones [
54
]. But even with all these seemingly right provisions,
13
Bovens and Marconi also discuss strategies aimed at combating the notion that
desegregated bathrooms would be uncomfortable or unhygienic [54].
The problem with gender-blind design and how we might begin to address it CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany
there is still one thing that these gender-desegregated bathrooms
could never do, and that is to provide a safe space from external
harassment, like bathrooms tend to be, for example in nightclubs
[54].
Moreover, this type of solution must be implemented with cau-
tion due to this very reason. Places such as India, for example,
where access to public sanitation is not as common [
51
] [
56
], can
lead to increased opportunities for physical and sexual violence
against women where this is already a widespread issue [
56
]. Thus,
in regard to this particular discussion, this type of bathroom con-
guration could aggravate an already serious problem.
3.3 So, what can we do about it
Sometimes we can point to a simple solution for a simple problem;
but people are far from simple, and the needs of so-called ‘marginal
users’ vary wildly in their contingency. Indeed, to understand the
marginal user as a uniform block that stands alone in contrast to
the hegemonic default represents a failure to appreciate the depth
of the human experience. No group stands as a uniformized block
with the same problems requiring the same solutions. Solutions
are, in fact, rarely simple, because what they are addressing is the
complexity of the human being — every one of them with “a number
of intertwined responsibilities and each of them [as] personal and
intransferable as a joy or a grief” [57] (p. 69).
Default measures will always ignore the needs of some, and
often of those with the least political agency. Because design has
such a signicant role in shaping society and culture, for design to
become an agent of political change, as writes Tony Fry, “it is vital
that the problems be fully understood and proposed actions have
actual transformative capability” [
20
] (p. 88). It is, thus, essential to
incorporate ethics as a deliberate and a priori step within the design
process — ethics which, by denition, cannot be exclusionary and
must center marginalized epistemologies such as feminist, queer,
and post-colonial methodologies in the basal steps of the design
process [6] [7] [58].
Failing to produce designs which accommodate women, queer,
trans*, intersex and gender-nonconforming people — all of us —
communicates that we are not welcome to engage with these prod-
ucts, experiences, services, or spaces, and ultimately reproduces gen-
dered oppression by and through design. To this point, Prado, build-
ing on Bardzell’s writings and drawing from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s
seminal work on intersectionality [
26
], argues for a framework
for feminist design which is a necessarily intersectional process
[
6
]. This, she asserts, is needed in order to challenge the current
design paradigm as one which reproduces gendered oppression
through designed objects and environments [
6
]. Further, Prado, like
Bardzell, also identies a number of feminist matters that design
must incorporate; however, she anchors her contention on the issue
of privilege, which she identies as pervasive in the design space
— design being the product of a “patriarchal, classist and racist
society” [
6
] (p. 5). This awareness is imperative and, as such, an
essential aspect of the deliberative process. Hence, she advocates
for the integration of marginalized epistemologies as an ethic unto
itself, by “[challenging] observers to question their own roles in
maintaining social injustice” [6] (p. 8).
4 THE MODEL
4.1 Foundations
Ruth Levitas describes a structure for societal reconstitution
14
in
three separate yet reciprocal modes. They are the archaeological
mode, a way of connecting concepts and images within political
programs and social and economic policies; the ontological mode,
a way of addressing and challenging the values and epistemologies
which permeate a particular society; and the architectural mode,
the ability to conceive of alternatives [59].
Building on all this, we propose a multidimensional model for an
ethically conscious design process (see Figure 2) which recognizes
the need for a multi-pronged approach and accounts for an inter-
sectional feminist ethics being an inextricable aspect thereto. In
this way, a design process that is conscious of all these intersecting
issues cannot simply be a sequence of steps but must become a
holistic endeavor. There can be no ordered hierarchy, only equal
parts of the same whole.
Epistemological starting points
▼
Ethical quandaries permeate the design process and are, in
fact, inextricable for it [
14
] — hence why the designer must act as
an ethical agent.
▼
A lack of ideological intent will merely perpetuate existing
power structures [20] [29] which fuel oppressive hegemony.
▼
Power dynamics are properly considered and accounted
for. It is especially important to consider those pertaining to
the “legitimacy” of marginal ways of knowing and being as the
power/knowledge binomial [
4
] is proven to constitute a signicant
channel for the perpetuity of systemic oppression [60].
▼
The hierarchical structuring of knowledge is known to per-
petuate inequality and power imbalances which breed relations
of domination [
5
] [
12
]. As such, local contexts must be treated as
not merely useful but in the same high regard as supposed expert
knowledge. This includes, by design, an elevation of specically
intersectional feminist issues [34].
▼
Because a stance anchored in neutrality will only propagate
gendered oppression [
2
], a specically gender-conscious approach
which takes into account the lived experiences of all women, queer,
trans*, intersex and gender-nonconforming people is far more ger-
mane to design solutions which aim for transformative agency.
▼
Within each space or group, divergences among people, par-
ticularly those related to gender, sexuality, class, race, ability, and
others [
26
] [
27
], must be observed. This multitude of perspectives
should be welcomed and regarded as a potential source of creativity
and information.
▼
Women, queer, trans*, intersex and gender-nonconforming
people’s contributions are respected and incorporated as signicant
contributions while taking care to not construct us as idealized
morally righteous martyrs who hold all the solutions as this carries
the propensity for restricting marginalized identities to subordinate
positions [61].
Research process
▼Feminist research ethic:
14
It should be remarked that Levitas’s work is largely focused on utopia [
59
]. Though
it falls beyond the purview of this article, it could be argued that the utopian project is
very closely aligned with that described herein.
CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany Ana Henriques et al.
A feminist research ethic will, by denition, be conscious of the
power dynamics inherent to the research process and, as such, it is
more likely that the application of explicitly intersectional feminist
frameworks will result in work that has “actual transformative
capability” [
20
] (p. 88). Feminist standpoints [
9
] redirect our focus
away from traditional queries that originate stale work that is
either ignorant of the needs of women, queer, trans*, intersex and
gender-nonconforming people or actively harms us. Instead, it is
able to ask questions that have not historically been explored within
the purview of HCI or even design as a whole. A well-established
feminist research ethic can also increase our condence in the tools
we develop for our projects, and thereby increase the quality of our
research. It is, after all, our collective responsibility as ethical agents
to assert our commitment to self-reection and our observance of
the power/knowledge [
4
] dynamics as we make sure that subjective
experiences are considered positively [
8
] [
9
] while acknowledging
that “neither the subjectivity of the researcher nor the subjectivity
of the researched can be eliminated in the (research) process” [
62
]
(p. 427).
▼Ethical Parallel Research:
Since ethical consideration within the design space is fairly new
[
63
], we, as designers and HCI scholars, would do well to learn
from more experienced elds. An especially interesting approach
is that of Ethical Parallel Research, originally described within the
bioethics purview. This is proposed as a method for attempting to
identify and evaluate which ethical consequences will derive from
a given piece of technology — positive and negative — within the
development process. That is, before the damage is done. Toward
that goal, Jongsma and Bredenoord identify six pillars of ethics
parallel research [
64
]. The rst, disentangling wicked problems, is
meant to facilitate an understanding of disparate stakeholder needs
by scrutinizing all the diverging viewpoints and clarifying their
concerns in order to ascertain whether there are signicant gaps in
knowledge or any underrepresented standpoint. The second, up-
stream or midstream ethical analysis, is focused on ethical analysis
in the earliest stages of development. This is done to reect on the
permeating, perhaps unconscious hegemonic assumptions when it
is not yet too late and, thus, help guide the remainder of the devel-
opment process. The third, ethics from within, incorporates experts
in various elds pertaining to the technology under study so as
to properly understand it and subsequently be able to identify its
implications. The fourth, empirical research, argues that interaction
with aected communities is essential to grasp their perspectives
as well as what eects something can have in practice. The fth,
participatory design, seeks the collaboration of societal actors in
the development of new projects and technologies. The sixth and
nal, societal impacts, argues for the consideration of ‘soft impacts’
like our values, autonomy or identity as also relevant alongside
more easily quantiable ‘hard impacts’ such as cost and risk.
▼Planning:
A comprehensive planning stage is exceptionally important and
should be recontextualized as a socially constructed political pro-
cess [
65
]. Given its inherent association with the values and epis-
temologies of all involved parties, planning processes, much like
design, are not neutral but heavily ideologically based [
66
]. The is-
sue is not merely that men tend to outnumber women, queer, trans*,
intersex and gender-nonconforming people in planning stages, but
also the hegemony of normative male perspectives within underly-
ing theories, ideologies, and cultures [
67
]. There is, hence, a clear
necessity for redesigning eective planning stages from an inter-
sectional feminist standpoint in ways that are historically, contex-
tually, and methodologically appropriate [
68
]. Collaborative and
participatory research models should, likewise, be planned around
the empowerment of women, queer, trans*, intersex and gender-
nonconforming people by accounting for needs such as safe spaces
and childcare [
65
] to allow participation and foster collaborative
exchanges among community members built upon mutual respect,
active listening, and an earnest willingness to learn [69].
Collaborative tools
▼Community participation:
An informed ethical deliberation requires a transversal approach
to community participation specically built around emancipatory
action-oriented theories and methodologies under an intersectional
feminist perspective. There is, nonetheless, a number of obstacles
to the unmarred involvement of women within participatory en-
gagements, even when a gender-conscious standpoint is assumed
[
65
] [
70
]. Indeed, the consultation of communities has typically
been modelled after adversarial modes of interaction which are
more often alienating to women, queer, trans*, intersex and gender-
nonconforming people [
65
]. This, combined with the historical
exclusion of these groups for a perceived and unfounded lack of
the technical skills, legitimate knowledge, and expertise required
for agendas centered around a hegemonic normative maleness.
Strategies must, then, be developed and adopted which consciously
address these issues and empower marginalized voices and perspec-
tives. Indeed, “the attempt to address gender issues head-on is what
distinguishes the more successful projects from those which merely
pay lip service to women before submerging them in some amor-
phous framework of community needs” [
71
] (p. 29). Working closely
with community organizers and social justice advocates within any
given context is also an important step [
72
]. Additionally, the es-
tablishment of women-only activities has been shown to be helpful
in discussions of issues pertaining to communication technologies
[
73
] and this could also be extrapolated for other marginalized
groups through “two-dimensional visual representations, physical
objects, spatial forms, interactive workshops, aective interfaces,
and embodied experiences” [10] (p. 4).
▼(Counter)storytelling:
Methods of design research anchored in design exploration of-
ten include practices of ctionalization such as speculative design,
design ction and scenario building [
10
] in an attempt to provide al-
ternatives to established design narratives. Teresa de Lauretis even
described the (re)telling of stories as a key aspect of feminist work
as a method of “[inscribing] into the picture of reality characters
and events and resolutions that were previously invisible, untold,
unspoken (and so unthinkable, unimaginable, ‘impossible’)” [
74
] (p.
11). Empowering women [
67
] to share their stories and experiences
can, in this way, lead to increased awareness and involvement with
the research process [
65
], in addition to providing a valuable source
of local knowledge. Counterstorytelling specically, as a methodol-
ogy rooted in Critical Race Theory, is set to create opportunities for
both personal development and hegemonic resistance, and has been
directly tied with an increased general understanding of intersec-
tional queer, trans*, intersex and gender-nonconforming identities
The problem with gender-blind design and how we might begin to address it CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany
Figure 2: The proposed model for an ethically conscious and multidimensional design process.
[
75
]. “Truly listening to others entails moving outside your own
conceptual frameworks, especially the binary thought structures
and patriarchal character of most Western knowledge” [
76
] (p. 239).
The establishment of avenues for people to share knowledge and
recontextualize it within hegemonic narratives is crucial in the pro-
cess of nding the power to create and challenge designs, systems,
and institutions that impact them [
75
]. These alternative stories
are, in this way, able to challenge the dominant narratives, ideolo-
gies, and socio-political structures [
8
] incurring in harmful design
actions through an activist practice [10].
▼Design activism:
Design activism, as described earlier, is plural in its presentation
and thus a highly adaptable vehicle for enacting transformative
change. From products and systems to personal everyday things
and public institutions, design activism is capable of idealizing new
systems as well as social and political practices through spaces of de-
signerly interventions. They act back and “[integrate] both political
statements and human emotions and increases factual and empathic
awareness to alter status quo” [
10
] (p. 3). A feminist approach to
design activism is, likewise, such that elevates the subjective and
values embodied experiences as a source of legitimate actionable
knowledge [
10
] while being cognizant of our own biases. As ar-
gues Lucy Suchman, simply boosting the visibility of marginalized
groups is not enough. Instead, we must be integrated as co-creators
of the design solutions that aect us [76].
4.2 Structure
Devoid of any form of sequential hierarchy, the model (see Figure
2) is built around the (de)construction of a three-dimensional equi-
lateral triangular pyramid as a metaphor for the endeavor herein
described. The planar structure was also rotated to present as an
inverted triangle as an ever-present semiotic reference to the ne-
cessity of feminist epistemologies for ethical deliberation. Further,
its cyclical representation symbolizes that the edice of construc-
tion will necessarily require a deconstruction of our own biases
and those that permeate our environments, guided by the express
intention to create something transformative — to construct.
The depicted pyramid is the same on each side — represent-
ing a holistic approach — but is depicted in two ways. The three-
dimensional presentation embodies acts of construction and the
planar representation those of deconstruction. Another relevant
aspect is that the pyramid lacks a base. This is done intentionally
to illustrate that this base must always be contextually (re)lled.
Additionally, the lack of a base reexively means that each side of
the pyramid stands on its own without any hierarchical distinctions.
An understanding of the context in which one designs, how one de-
signs, and the choices one makes is imperative in producing design
which does not incur in harmful reproduction of biased hegemonic
values, and thus can be neither graded nor separated.
Paradoxes and contradictions will likely be inevitable; however,
when deconstructed and understood, they too can be a tool for chal-
lenging the dominant hegemony when constructing transformative
design solutions. Toward that end, a thorough deconstruction of the
matrix of oppression [
27
] through an analysis of power/knowledge
[
4
] dynamics with a commitment to transparency is key. The priv-
ilege of which Prado [
6
] speaks, in this way, acts like a form of
blinding hubris — the kind that allows us to believe we can devise
a single perfect solution for a universal neutral user. We cannot.
The proposed model is, likewise, intent on providing a theoreti-
cal basis so that we may nd inclusionary solutions that work in
a given context while at the same time understanding that they
will seldom be replicable because these contingent realities will
necessarily diverge (as illustrated by the baseless pyramid). And
what these might look like might vary wildly depending on: what
is the objective — is there a specic political/ethical intent; who are
we and who are we designing for — disclose personal biases and
understand the expressed needs of the public by involving them as
co-creators; why are we doing this — is it transformative; where
are we designing — do we understand the context within which
we are designing; and how are we doing it — is the methodology
appropriate.
CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany Ana Henriques et al.
5 CHALLENGES AND FUTURE WORK
The proposed model for an explicitly feminist ethical deliberation
process should be treated as a rst draft, rather than a set exper-
iment. The hope is that this might provide a good starting point
for discussion and further research, but future work is certainly
required to help disentangle these intricacies.
Indeed, feminist frameworks can make empirical studies some-
what challenging, as feminist theory is rooted in revealing the
underlying politics in every step of the research process [
65
]. There
is, by denition, no singular correct way of being feminist, which
creates additional degrees of complexity associated with this type
of research and, thus, also poses some implicit limitations to any
subsequent praxis. These limitations will likely be of two inter-
related natures. On one hand, the pluralism within marginalized
epistemologies, rooted in the recognition of anti-hegemonic alter-
natives, albeit inevitable and necessary, even hopeful, displays no
clear path forward. On the other, that very quality displays an often-
overwhelming array of possibilities that can come across as too
overwhelming to begin narrowing down.
Further, in dealing with these marginalized epistemologies, there
is an inherent decit in visibility, which tends to be followed by
higher levels of scrutiny. If something fails or originates unintended
consequences, the temptation for the scientic community to argue
that it would have never succeeded will be greater. And because
there is such underwhelming representation, much more account-
ability will be demanded for projects of this nature, which might
lead to less scrutinized proposals anchored in the hegemonic tradi-
tion gaining ground and mitigating the visibility of any alternatives.
That, of course, places an undue burden on ideation and subse-
quent creation, which is something to be overcome. But that it is
challenging does not make it any less important.
Many dierent experiments and tests have been left for the
future to keep building on this proposal. Future work should con-
cern deeper analysis of particular mechanisms, new proposals, and
variations on methodology for a number of dierent projects and
contexts. This is necessary to develop a better grasp of what works
in a given context and what doesn’t, and also so that, eventually,
we might be able to accurately map this out.
Therefore, future research should be conducted in realistic ap-
plied settings. Our next step will be to apply this model with the
students of the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Architecture +
Faculty of Fine Arts Master’s in Interaction Design. This is so that
we have easier access to a broad sample size and has the added
bonus of integrating students into this research — students who
not only crave ethics-oriented teaching but also will, at such a
formative stage, benet the most from it [
77
]. Looking forward,
next steps should entail a paradigmatic shift in the development
of alternative value systems that perpetuate gendered oppression
by design. Moreover, we believe that further similar studies in a
plurality of dierent settings could prove quite benecial to HCI
literature as well as, potentially, policymaking and regulation of
technological development.
6 CONCLUSION
A design approach intended to be predicated on ‘neutral’ or ‘ideal’
systems will always fail to see beyond the designers’ own expe-
rience in relation to the hegemonic paradigm. This is why an ap-
proach that centers on an explicitly intersectional feminist frame-
work for ethical deliberation as an integral part of the design process
is so important. If we don’t question the values, intentions, and out-
comes which underlie the design choices we make, we are failing
to act as ethical agents, and become complicit in a design which
perpetuates and communicates oppression.
Ethics isn’t optional. It’s already part of the design process,
whether implicit or explicit. Ethical implications abound in the
design choices we decide to make. The problem is that we are
largely not considering them when it matters — before the dam-
age is done. Our interactions with the world, the way we perceive
it, the way we perceive others, and even ourselves; are mediated
by a design that is decidedly not neutral. It always embodies and
communicates meaning, either with our knowledge and consent,
or with our ignorance and negligence.
As designers, we are accountable to the public for whom we
design; and, as such, we must act with the owed responsibility. A
responsibility to include, rather than exclude. Designing for equal-
ity — for accessibility as well as usability — requires transformative
political intent. So we see, then, that designing toward gender parity
cannot be oblivious to intersecting issues of gender. Any approach
that is not thorough in its intentionality will merely reinforce solu-
tions that are exclusionary and communicate oppression in ways
that we are blind to. This is why, rather than a gender-blind ap-
proach to design, what is required instead is one that is specically
gender-conscious — aware of these issues in all their intersect-
ing forms. It is our collective responsibility as HCI researchers
and designers to reinforce our commitment to the observance of
power/knowledge dynamics, as well as our own complicity in per-
petuating hegemonic epistemologies. The proposed model is a way
for us to integrate this kind of feminist ethical deliberation within
the design process, which, hopefully, can positively contribute to
HCI literature in this regard.
Designing for gender parity is not a matter of resources or ca-
pability; it’s a question of priorities. And, as it stands, we sim-
ply are not prioritizing women, queer, trans*, intersex, or gender-
nonconforming people. Ethical deliberation matters. Our choices,
matter. Especially the ones we don’t make.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the alt.CHI 2022 reviewers for their valuable
comments and suggestions about the previous version of this article.
Thank you.
This research was funded by LARSyS (project reference
– UIDB/50009/2020) and by CIEBA (project reference –
UIDB/04042/2020).
REFERENCES
[1]
Manzini, Ezio. 2015. Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design
for Social Innovation. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.
[2]
Canlı, Ece. 2017. Queerying Design: Material Re-congurations of Body Politics.
Ph.D Thesis. University of Porto.
[3] Simon, H., 1996. The Sciences of the Articial. MIT Press, Boston, MA.
The problem with gender-blind design and how we might begin to address it CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany
[4]
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings
1972-1977. (C. Gordon, Ed.). Vintage Books. London.
[5]
Ackerly, Brooke and True, Jacqui. 2008. Reexivity in Practice: Power and Ethics
in Feminist Research on International Relations. International Studies Review,
10(4), 693-707. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25482017
[6]
Prado de O. Martins, Luiza. 2014. Privilege and Oppression: Towards a Feminist
Speculative Design. In Lim, Y., Niedderer, K., Redström, J., Stolterman, E. and
Valtonen, A. (Eds.), Design’s Big Debates - DRS International Conference 2014,
Umeå: DRS, 16-19.
[7]
Bardzell, Shaowen. 2010. Feminist HCI: taking stock and outlining an agenda
for design. Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors
in computing systems - CHI ’10, 1301-1310. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1753326.
1753521.
[8]
Haraway, Donna. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Questioning Feminism
and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. https:
//doi.org/10.2307/3178066.
[9]
Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge?: Thinking from
women’s lives. Cornell University Press. Ithaca, NY
[10]
Heidaripour, Maryam and Forlano, Laura. 2018. Formgiving to Feminist Futures
as Design Activism. In Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia,
E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018,
25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.464
[11] Halberstam, Jack. 1998. Female Masculinity. Duke University Press. London.
[12]
Ehrnberger, Karin, Räsänen, Minna, and Ilstedt, Sara. 2012. Visualising gender
norms in design: Meet the mega hurricane mixer and the drill dolphia. Interna-
tional Journal of Design, 6(3), 85-98. http://www.ijdesign.org/index.php/IJDesign/
article/view/1070/531.
[13]
Churchill, Elizabeth. 2010. Sugared puppy-dog tails. Interactions, 17(2), 52-56.
https://doi.org/10.1145/1699775.1699787.
[14]
Verbeek Peter. 2008. Morality in Design: Design Ethics and the Morality of
Technological Artifacts. In Kroes, P., Vermaas, P. E., Light, A. and Moore, S.
A. (Eds.), Philosophy and Design: From Engineering to Architecture. Springer.
Dordrecht.
[15]
Atteld, Judy. 2000. Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Blooms-
bury Publishing. London.
[16]
Friedman, Batya and Kahn, Peter. 2002. Human values, ethics, and design. The
human-computer interaction handbook: fundamentals, evolving technologies
and emerging applications. L. Erlbaum Associates Inc. USA, 1177-1201.
[17]
Ansari, Ahmed. 2018. What a Decolonisation of Design Involves: Two Pro-
grammes for Emancipation. Decolonising Design. Retrieved August 2, 2021 from
https://www.decolonisingdesign.com/actions-and-interventions/publications/
2018/what-a- decolonisation-of- design-involves- by-ahmed- ansari/
[18]
Scotford, Martha. 1994. Messy History vs. Neat History: Toward an Expanded
View of Women in Graphic Design, Visible Language, 28(4), 368-388.
[19]
Bretteville, Sheila. 1974. A reexamination of some aspects of the design arts from
the perspective of a woman designer. In: Kamarck, E. (Ed.), Arts in society: women
and the arts, volume 11(1), University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 114-123.
[20]
Fry, Tony. 2007. Book review: The Archeworks Papers, Design Issues, 23(3), 88-92.
[21]
Keshavarz, Mahmoud. 2016. Design-Politics: An Inquiry into Passports, Camps
and Borders. Ph.D Thesis. Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society.
[22]
Fuad-Luke, Alastair. 2009. Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustain-
able World. Routledge. London.
[23]
Kwinter, Sanford. 2001. Architectures of Time: Toward a Theory of the Event in
Modernist Culture. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.
[24]
Gutting, Gary (Ed.). 2005. The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge
University Press. Cambridge, MA.
[25]
Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do Artifacts Have Politics?, Daedalus, 109(1), 121-136.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652.
[26]
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex:
A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and
antiracist politics. In Bartlett, K. and Kennedy, R. (Eds.), Feminist Legal Theory.
Routledge, New York, NY, pp.57-80. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/
vol1989/iss1/8.
[27]
Morgan, Kathryn. 1996. Describing the Emperor’s New Clothes: Three Myths of
Educational (In-)Equity. In Diller, A., Houston, B., Morgan, K. P., Ayim, M. (Eds.),
The Gender Question in Education. Routledge. New York, NY. 105-123.
[28]
Costanza-Chock, Sasha. 2018. Design Justice, A.I., and Escape from the Matrix of
Domination. Journal of Design and Science.
[29]
Alco, Linda. 2007. Epistemologies of ignorance: Three types. In Sullivan, S. and
Tuana, N. (Eds.) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. State University of New
York Press. New York, NY.
[30]
Beauvoir, Simone. 1953 [1949].The Second Sex, (Parshley, H. M. Trans.). Jonathan
Cape. London.
[31]
Perez, Caroline. 2019. Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed
for Men. Abrams Press. New York, NY.
[32]
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977 [1972].Outline of a Theory of Practice, (Nice, R. Trans.).
Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, MA.
[33]
Diehm, Jan and Thomas, Amber. 2018. Women’s Pockets are Inferior. The Pudding.
Retrieved August 4, 2021 from https://pudding.cool/2018/08/pockets/
[34]
Summers, Chelsea. 2016. The Sexist, Political History of Pockets. Vox. Re-
trieved August 3, 2021 from https://www.vox.com/2016/9/19/12865560/politics-
of-pockets- suragettes-women
[35]
Petter, Olivia. 2018. Apple has been criticised by women for making phones that
are ‘too big’ to t in their hands. The Independent. Retrieved August 4, 2021
from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/apple-iphone- xs-max-
new-too- big-size- women-sexist- feminist-a8537171.html
[36]
Kingma, Boris and van Marken Lichtenbelt, Wouter. 2015. Energy consumption in
buildings and female thermal demand. Nature Climate Change, 5(12), 1054-1056.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2741.
[37]
Stanney, Kay, Fidopiastis, Cali, Foster, Linda. 2020. Virtual Reality Is Sexist: But
It Does Not Have to Be. Frontiers in robotics and AI, 7(4), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.
3389/frobt.2020.00004.
[38]
Tritten, Travis. 2016. Form-Fitted Body Armor Rolling Out as Combat Roles Ex-
pand for Women. Retrieved August 1, 2021 from https://www.military.com/daily-
news/2016/03/04/form-tted- body-armor- rolling-out- combat-roles- expand-
women.html
[39]
O’Connor, Ema and Bergengruen, Vera. 2019. Military Doctors Told Them It Was
Just ‘Female Problems.’ Weeks Later, They Were In The Hospital. Retrieved Au-
gust 1, 2021 from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emaoconnor/woman-
military-doctors- female-problems- health-care
[40]
Hamberg, Katarina. 2008. Gender Bias in Medicine. Women’sHealth, 4(3), 237-243.
https://doi.org/10.2217/17455057.4.3.237.
[41]
Blewer, Audrey, McGovern, Shaun, Schmicker, Robert, May, Susanne, Morrison,
Laurie, Aufderheide, Tom, Daya, Mohamud, Idris, Ahamed, Callaway, Clifton,
Kudenchuk, Peter, Vilke, Gary and Abella, Benjamin. 2018. Gender Disparities
Among Adult Recipients of Bystander Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in the
Public, Circulation. Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, 11(8). https://doi.org/
10.1161/circoutcomes.118.004710
[42]
Womanikin. 2019. Womanikin. Retrieved July 25, 2021 from https://womanikin.
org/
[43]
Shaver, Katherine. 2012. Female dummy makes her mark on male-
dominated crash tests. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 26, 2021 from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tracandcommuting/female-dummy-
makes-her- mark-on- male-dominated- crash-tests/2012/03/07/gIQANBLjaS_
story.html?utm_term$=$.5ec23738142a
[44]
Bose, Dipan, Segui-Gomez, Maria, Crandall, Je. 2011. Vulnerability of female
drivers involved in motor vehicle crashes: an analysis of US population at risk.
American journal of public health, 101(12), 2368-2373. https://doi.org/10.2105/
ajph.2011.300275.
[45]
Buolamwini, Joy and Gebru, Timnit. 2018. Gender Shades: Intersectional Accu-
racy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classication, Proceedings of the 1st
Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, PMLR(81), 77-91.
https://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a.html.
[46]
Irschik, Elisabeth and Kail, Eva. 2013. Vienna: Progress Towards a Fair Shared
City. In Madariaga, I. and Roberts, M. (Eds.), Fair Shared Cities: The Impact of
Gender Planning in Europe. Routeledge. London. 193-230.
[47]
Sidorova, Milota. 2017. More Girls To Parks! Case Study of Ein-
siedler Park, Vienna. WPS Prague. Retrieved August 4, 2021 from
http://www.wpsprague.com/research-1/2017/1/6/more-girls- to-parks- case-
study-of- einsiedler-park- viennamilota-sidorova
[48]
European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life, 2013. Ur-
ban planning on girls conditions. Charter-equality.eu. Retrieved August 4, 2021
from https://charter-equality.eu/exemple-de- bonnes-pratiques/urban- planning-
on-girls- conditions.html?ref_id$=$166
[49]
CIVITAS. 2020. Smart choices for cities — Gender equality and mobility: mind
the gap!. civitas.eu. Retrieved August 5, 2021 from https://civitas.eu/sites/default/
les/civ_pol-an2_m_web.pdf
[50]
Banks, Taunya. 1991. Toilets as a Feminist Issue: A True Story, Berkeley Women’s
Law Journal, 6(2), 263-289. https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/
334.
[51]
Greed, Clara. 2014. Global gendered toilet provision. AAG Annual Conference.
Tampa, FL, USA. http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/24058.
[52]
Al-Badr, Ahmed and Al-Shaikh, Ghadeer.2013. Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections
Management in Women: A review. Sultan Qaboos University medical journal,
13(3), 359-367. https://doi.org/10.12816%2F0003256.
[53]
Jones, Charlotte and Slater, Jen. 2020. The toilet debate: Stalling trans possibilities
and defending ‘women’s protected spaces’. The Sociological Review, 68(4), 834-
851. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120934697.
[54]
Bovens, Luc and Marcoci, Alexandru. 2020. The gender-neutral bathroom: A new
frame and some nudges. Behavioural Public Policy, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1017/
bpp.2020.23.
[55]
Council of Europe. 2007. Gender Matters: A Manual on Addressing Gender-
based Violence Aecting Young People. In Council of Europe, Gender Matters: A
Manual on Addressing Gender-based Violence Aecting Young People. Council
of Europe, 43-66.
CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany Ana Henriques et al.
[56]
Anand, Anu. 2014. Lack of toilets puts India’s health and rural women’s safety at
risk. The Guardian. Retrieved August 4, 2021 from https://www.theguardian.com/
global-development/2014/aug/28/toilets- india-health- rural-women- safety
[57]
Bunge, Mario. 1975. Towards a Technoethics. Philosophic Exchange, 6(1), 69-79.
https://doi.org/10.5840/monist197760134.
[58]
Borning, Alan and Muller, Michael. 2012. Next steps for value sensitive design.
Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems - CHI ’12, 1125-1134.
[59]
Levitas, Ruth. 2013. Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society.
Palgrave Macmillan. New York, NY.
[60]
Weedon, Chris. 1987. Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Blackwell.
Cambridge, MA.
[61]
Lennie, June. 1996. Gender and power in Sustainable Development Planning:
Towards a feminist poststructuralist framework of participation. Master Thesis.
Queensland University of Technology.
[62]
Acker, Joan, Barry, Kate and Esseveld, Joke. 1983. Objectivity and truth: Problems
in doing feminist research
✰
. Womens Studies International Forum, 6, 423-435.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(83)90035- 3.
[63]
Henriksen, Danah. 2016. The role of theory in Design: Reections on ‘Examining
practical, everyday theory use in design research’. She Ji: The Journal of Design,
Economics, and Innovation, 2(2), 141-143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2016.12.
005.
[64]
Jongsma, Karin and Bredenoord, Annelien. 2020. Ethics parallel research: an
approach for (early) ethical guidance of biomedical innovation. BMC Med Ethics
21(81). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-020- 00524-z
[65]
Lennie, June. 1999. Deconstructing gendered power relations in participatory
planning. Women’s Studies International Forum, 22(1), 97-112. https://doi.org/10.
1016/s0277-5395(98)00098- 3.
[66]
Kerkin, Kate and Huxley, Margo. 1993. Training women planners or educating
feminist urbanists. Women and Planning: A National Conference. Urban Futures
Journal, 3(3), 33-38.
[67]
Sandercock, Leonie and Forsyth, Ann. 1992. A gender agenda: New directions
for planning theory. Journal of the American Planning Association, 58(1), 49-59.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01944369208975534.
[68]
Steeves, H. Leslie. 1993. Creating imagined communities: Development communi-
cation and the challenge of feminism. Journal of Communication, 43(3), 218-229.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01295.x.
[69]
Daley, John and Angulo, Julio. 1990. People-centered community planning. Com-
munity Development Society. Journal, 21(2), 88-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/
15575339009489963.
[70]
Parpart, Jane. 1995. Deconstructing the development “expert”. Gender, devel-
opment and the “vulnerable groups”. In Marchand, M. and Parpart, J. (Eds.),
Feminism/ Postmodernism/ Development. Routledge. London, 221-243.
[71]
Peel, Mark. 1993. Who speaks, who gets heard? Women and planning in poor
suburbs. Women and Planning: A National Conference, Urban Futures Journal,
3(3), 27-30.
[72]
Costanza-Chock, Sasha. 2020. Design Justice: Community-led practices to build
the worlds we need. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.
[73]
Bruce, Margaret and Adam, Alison. 1989. Expert systems and women’s lives:
A technology assessment. Futures, 21, 480-497. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-
3287(89)90087-6.
[74]
de Lauretis, Teresa. 1986. Feminist Studies. Critical Studies. Indiana University
Press. Bloomington, IN.
[75]
Wagaman, M. Alex, Obejero, Rae and Gregory, James. 2018. Countering the
Norm, (Re)authoring Our Lives: The Promise Counterstorytelling Holds as a
Research Methodology With LGBTQ Youth and Beyond. International Journal of
Qualitative Methods, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918800646.
[76]
Suchman, Lucy. 2002. Located accountabilities in technology production. Scan-
dinavian Journal of Information Systems: Vol. 14: Iss. 2, Article 7. https://aisel.
aisnet.org/sjis/vol14/iss2/7
[77]
Nini, Paul. 2020. Threading Ethics in a Design Curriculum. In Scherling, L. and
DeRosa, A. (Eds.), Ethics in Design and Communication: Critical Perspectives.
Bloomsbury. London, 206-215.
