Gender and discipline: publication practices in design
- Publisher:
- Intellect
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 2010, 3 (1), pp. 63 - 78
- Issue Date:
- 2010-01
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Design research and writing began to appear in scholarly journals over 30 years ago, coinciding in Australia with the transition of Design education into universities. Concurrently, a significant increase in the number of women in what could be considered a male-dominated profession and emergent discipline actuated feminist-informed âwomen and Designâ writing. While this writing raised important questions about gender and Design, it is generally not cited in Design literatures that do not have a specifically feminist focus, and as this article will attest, publication and citation rates demonstrate the dominance of men in positions of influence in scholarly Design journals. This is particularly problematic for female Design academics and for the field in the current audit climate in universities, whereby state-funded research output is measured by citation analysis systems. Drawing on feminist and Foucauldian theorizations of power and knowledge, and supported by an empirical audit and analysis of gender distribution in publication in two scholarly Design journals, I argue first that scholarship as a form of social practice in new professional fields such as Design is complexly disciplined and problematically gendered. Second, I argue that further empirical research, and new and different kinds of feminist-informed writing that attend closely to issues of gender, is required to productively disrupt and reconceptualize Design scholarship as it is currently practiced.
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