Why WIID Exists
Despite a 50/50 gender split in academia, women only make up about 19% of the professional industrial design industry.
Hearing that statistic at IDSA’s Women & Design Summit last October was eye-opening, but unfortunately not surprising. In talking to people at the conference, we found it was not uncommon for women to be the only person of their gender on their team. And as astounding as 19% is, that number has actually significantly increased over the past few years as awareness of and appreciation for design has increased. Although there is still little research done to uncover why this disparity exists, initial hypotheses suggest that the low percentage is due to a lack of women in design leadership roles. Unfortunately, many female industrial designers are encouraged to pursue careers on the “fray” of industrial design, including research, UI/UX, and strategy. While these are wonderful fields that many women do amazing work in, a problem exists when women who want to continue pursuing a career in industrial design are discouraged because they do not see women in the type of roles they are striving to occupy. *
We are Mallory and McKayla, we are two female industrial designers working in Chicago. We decided to form this organization after attending the Women & Design Summit simply because we wanted to continue the conversation about how to grow the community of female industrial designers in Chicago. Since the birth of that idea, it has quickly grown into much more and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. Our goal with this organization is to help bridge the gender gap in the industrial design industry. By building a community of female industrial designers, we can show everyone that there are amazing women doing amazing things in the industrial design industry. We want to mentor women at all stages of their careers to show female designers that they can be leaders. We want to show a diversity of skill sets, demonstrating that you don’t have to fit in one box to be considered a designer. We want to grow this community with a mindset of inclusion and advocate for the issues women face in the industrial design community and the world. We hope you’ll join us in this mission!
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*Information provided by the awesome research done by Betsy Barnhart and Kellie Walters at Iowa State University