The female leaders of the design world

I attend a really good program teaching Design Management. Design as a process that leads to an outcome is essentially viewed upon as more important in society, but there appears to be a gap between really devoted designers aching to deliver good work and the emphasis on this in leadership. One cannot really thrive and build design culture without a proper mandate. I am doing this to improve my own leadership skills, so I eventually can build culture for other great designers to run processes and deliver good work.

The program covers relevant topics, and on the first leg one of the topics were design leadership. At one point a list of different types of leaders were presented, with the names of some fitting the characteristics below. The scribes, the provocateurs, the scholars, the entertainers, the ambassadors, the managers, the visionaries, the maestros. The men. Because each and every name on the list was male.

I raised my hand and asked if there really isn't one single female design leader that deserves a place on that list?

But then it struck me that even though I can name loads of design leaders, even for me, the majority are male. And I don't think that is because men lead superior to women in the field of design.

I am not the first one to adress this bias. The brilliant Su Mathews Hale had
a very similar experience that ended up in a postcard and a devotion to pave the way for female seniority in the field of design. You also have Hall of femmes, a site dedicated to hightlight the work of outstanding women in the field of design and art direction.

According to The professional association for design, more than 50 percent of people working in the design and graphics arena are women. However, only 3 percent of women are creative directors, the most senior roles in the field.

For me, this is an inspiration to work on becoming a better leader. I also created a forum working on creating a curated site featuring the bios of brilliant women in several fields, so you never need to look far to be able to toss a few heavy names in when you are addressing the domination.

To be continued...