Exploring together: The role of power in GD
Chiara Del Gaudio2021, Gendered Design in STEAM Bulletin 4
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One goal of the GDS program is to support the emergence of a network of scholars engaged with exploring the field of Gendered Design (GD) and experimenting with more aware design practices. The GDS research teams are for sure members of this potential future and work-in-progress network, along with the GDS core team and experts (gender, regional, and sector). With this in mind, a new set of activities to support the development of this network was designed and took the shape of LabTwo. LabTwo embraces topics of interest from the collective group of researchers and creates space for exchange, discussion, and knowledge production around them. LabTwo | Session One, took place on June 25, 2021, on the first selected topic ‘The role of power in GD’. The session was designed and facilitated by us, Chiara Del Gaudio and Raquel Noronha.
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A CLOSER LOOK
Our GDS Labs are opportunities to gather the GDS network for the collective exploration, knowledge building
and advancement on Gendered Design (GD). Here, Chiara Del Gaudio and Raquel Noronha talk about their
GDS LabTwo | Session One - Exploring together: The role of power in GD.
Introduction
activities. The four identified concepts, with the first two the
focus of Session One, are:
One goal of the GDS program is to support the emergence
of a network of scholars engaged with exploring the field
of Gendered Design (GD) and experimenting with more
aware design practices. The GDS research teams are for
sure members of this potential future and work-in-progress
network, along with the GDS core team and experts
(gender, regional, and sector). With this in mind, a new set
of activities to support the development of this network was
designed and took the shape of LabTwo.
• Discursive formations and dispersions
• Conditioned participation
• Time control
• Engagement in making
Based on the GDS goal described earlier, we decided that
open and collaborative conversation based on research
and design experiences, theoretical reflections, and
speculations would be the basis of the session. Therefore,
beforehand we shared the concepts' description and some
questions. We asked the participants to read and reflect
on the concepts we were proposing for this exploratory
session. We invited them to think about situations from
their GDS design project to exemplify the concepts. We
asked them to bring two examples, one for each concept.
If no example could be found from their GDS project, one
could be taken from their professional history.
LabTwo embraces topics of interest from the collective
group of researchers and creates space for exchange,
discussion, and knowledge production around them.
LabTwo | Session One, took place on June 25, 2021,
on the first selected topic ‘The role of power in GD’. The
session was designed and facilitated by us, Chiara Del
Gaudio and Raquel Noronha.
LabTwo | Session One: the making
The first session of LabTwo emerged from the awareness
that the design process consists of, and is the result of,
the interweaving and interaction of several voices and
perspectives, which can be clearly known and expressed,
but also subjacent and hidden. Cultural specificities
contribute to informing these perspectives and voices.
Therefore, they underlie design practices and play a role
in the power dynamics that define the design process.
This comprehension enables a better understanding of
why gender issues and opportunities are embedded in the
design process.
We asked participants to present these examples during
the session as a catalyst for exchange, peer-support and
contribution. We asked participants to present these
examples during the session as a catalyst for exchange,
peer-support and contribution. We also asked them to
bring the theoretical references that they used to think
about the suggested concepts. Aware of the richness and
diversity of each ones' experience, and of knowledge
itself, the concepts and our definitions were understood as
means to start the conversation and exploration, not as an
end point or to be repeated and replicated. The concepts
The session aimed to explore together the interconnection
between power, design, and gender, drawing from postmodern and decolonial perspectives. Specifically, drawing
from Michel Foucault's and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's
work, we identified some key concepts to analyze and think
about a design practice that embraces gender issues and
opportunities. We identified four concepts and addressed
two of them in Session One, leaving the others for future
Chiara Del Gaudio | Assistant Professor, School of
Industrial Design. Master Coordinator for Master of
Design. GDS Program Investigator.
Raquel Noronha | Adjunct Professor and Director of
Design and Technology. Head of Graduate Program in
Design. GDS Regional Expert for Latin America.
11
A closer look
we explored were discursive formations and dispersions
and conditioned participation.
"According to Raffestin, power can be
characterized in two ways: by its striking presence
or by its invisibility."
Concept one: Discursive formations and dispersions
Drawing on Foucault's work, discursive formations and
dispersions refers to losing the sense of the origin of
discourses. When a discourse and its practices are assumed
as something given, the origin of the discourse gets lost.
The naturalization and alienated reproduction of the
practices that operationalize the discourses occur. Among
these practices, we highlight the very act of designing
and the understanding of gender issues. Within the scope
of gendered design, the use of methods, techniques,
and tools can be co-opted by discourses engendered in
norms, values, and standards that, potentially, will then
be understood as truth. We, as designers, are not always
aware of all this.
power relations are more active than those of resistance;
and to the extent to which we do not notice them. For
example, Rivera-Cusicanqui alerts us from the traps of the
decolonial discourse that if on the one hand, reminds us
of emancipatory discourses, on the other hand, reinforces
the legitimacy of hegemonic powers since the discourse on
autonomy overlaps its practices.
In this regard, we invited our colleagues to discuss the
level of discursive co-optation that is intrinsic to our design
practices, through the creativity tools we choose, how we
organize the design flow, through to the software and
applications selected: What type of tool(s) do we choose?
How do we choose them? Do they reveal a way of thinking
and acting on gender issues? What are these? Are we
aware of this? What is the relationship with gender issues
and the relative established orders and power dynamics
that the ones we have chosen bring with them?
According to Raffestin, power can be characterized in
two ways: by its striking presence or by its invisibility. In
the first way, characterized by the use of the capital letter,
Power is present in the way the State manifests itself,
through its institutions and its laws. Although authoritative
and regulatory, it is something familiar because we are
used to it. In the other case, power (with the lowercase
letter) spreads everywhere. This does not mean that it is
in everything, says Foucault. However, it emanates from
everywhere. From this point of view, the author invites us to
look at relationships. It is through the relationships that this
power is exercised. For Foucault, resistance to the power's
impositions does not exist outside the relationship. Power
and resistance are intrinsic to each other.
Considered as normal, the tool is necessary for the
standardization process. The standardization process
eliminates gender differences and (establishes) and
reproduces a standard to be achieved.
Concept two: Conditioned participation
The concept of conditioned participation that we wanted to
discuss emerged from our explorations of Foucault's studies
on disciplinary dispositive. In Foucault, a dispositive is a
network of relationships between heterogeneous elements
(for example institutions, regulations, discourses, laws,
In the context of material culture, forms of co-optation
by dominant discourse are perceived as normal when
Power studies timeline (work in progress)
12
A closer look
scientific statements, etc.) that is constituted according
to a specific strategic purpose (in the case of disciplinary
dispositive, this is the production of politically docile and
economically profitable individuals).
"... disciplinary devices are present and active
in any sphere of human life and activity, and
inform and discipline our participation in different
societal spheres. Without us noticing it, they
define what can be done, how it can be done,
and allow it to happen."
Therefore, disciplinary devices are present and active in
any sphere of human life and activity, and inform and
discipline our participation in different societal spheres.
Without us noticing it, they define what can be done, how
it can be done, and allow it to happen. They define the
society in that we live, the objects we produce, and that
which constitutes it, as well as any processes of knowledge
production. They influence us and who produces them,
since we overlook their influence and accept the social and
knowledge norms and the order they are established and
promoted.
All of this has a strong influence on the possibilities of
each person's contribution and how this will actually be
considered and made tangible. This produces conditioned
inclusions and conditioned participations. By sticking
to what is proposed by social and disciplinary norms,
conditioned inclusions are produced and exclusions of
content and people from the production of knowledge,
which in the design process takes the form of the (tangible
and intangible) outcomes of the process.
What does this have to do with design? And with a design
practice that aims to have a more critical and inclusive
stance about gender issues?
If we do not reflect on this, the simple inclusion of minorities
in the design process will not contribute to redefine the
balance of power. It becomes essential to reflect on the
conditions we establish for someone's participation.
It shows us that when we think about design practice (and
research in design) and even more about participatory
design, we need to reflect on the conditions placed on the
possibility of participating: Who is allowed to participate?
What role can someone play? What activities can be
attributed to those who decide to join the process? What
activities are only for the designers or for some specific
actors? And why? At what stage of the process are people
invited to participate? What are they allowed to say
(according to the time they are allowed to participate, and
how often they take part in the activity)?
LabTwo | Session One: the happening and next steps
At the beginning of the session, we provided an overview
of the concepts we identified, and explained how we did
that (see ‘Power studies timeline’). We then had three
groups of research project teams from Latin America
and Africa presenting their reflections and examples on
the proposed concepts. The small and intimate format
facilitated communication and provided space for in-depth
group discussion. Still, we would have liked and felt the
need of more time, to go beyond what everybody knows
on this into what we can discover together. However,
we understand Session One as the first step of a more
extended conversation and process of building together
knowledge on this topic that might unfold in subsequent
activities throughout the next months.
Or even: How to open the process to different voices and
embrace different standpoints in a design process that
seeks to embrace differences? How is someone invited
to join the process? What are the social dynamics and
rituals that constitute the action and social interaction in
the context? How do they influence and define someone's
participation? How does our gendered design approach
address participation? How do these questions apply to the
practice of gendered design?
References
• Foucault, Michel. (2002) The Archaeology of Knowledge. London and New York: Routledge.
• Raffestin, Claude. (1980) Por uma geografia do poder. São Paulo: Editora Ática.
• Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. (2010) Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: Una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos
descolonizadores. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón.
13
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