Offering an alternative, female-focused history, Women in Design is
an essential new tome dedicated to the innovators who have shaped the
design world - ELLE Decoration
Featuring more than 100 profiles of pioneering women designers, some who
have achieved global recognition such as Ray Eames, Charlotte Perriand
and Zaha Hadid, it also introduces the fascinating and often untold
stories of lesser-known designers, who have similarly shaped and
enriched the story of design.
An excerpt from the book:
This book is, first and foremost, a celebration of some truly
remarkable women whose careers in design have been exceptional. They can
rightly be called exceptional because, despite the odds stacked against
them, the women featured here created significant bodies of work within
what was - and to a certain extent still is - the male-dominated field
of design.
By highlighting their extraordinary achievements, our intention is to
contextualize the role of women in design over the last one hundred
years or so in order to trace how the status of female designers has
evolved, while at the same time assessing where it stands today. In the
past, all too often the work of female designers was overlooked in the
literature on design, while also being woefully under-represented in
exhibitions and museum collections. This book seeks to redress these
outstanding omissions.
The primary reasons for this paucity of representation are that - as in
other male-dominated professions - women were often either largely
excluded from certain areas of endeavour or had no option but to take on
subordinate roles. Women designers and their work have, also, all too
often been assessed through the lens of the patriarchy, meaning they
have either been entirely defined by their gender or their contributions
have been subsumed under that of their 'more famous' husbands, brothers,
fathers or lovers.
This book attempts to tell a very different story, one that appraises
their activities within the wider landscape of the feminist movement -
both past and present. It is only now that women designers working in
developed free-market economies are beginning to enjoy anything like
equality with their male counterparts when it comes to professional
access and recognition, let alone parity of remuneration. As for women
living elsewhere in the world, having any kind of professional career,
let alone one in design, is still often largely an impossible dream.
