The Women-Centric Eye
One of the two foundational tools in the Women-Centric Design toolkit is the Women-Centric Eye. Based on a popular framework in gender practice – gender continuums (here is one example) – the eye is an evaluative, opportunity identification tool with the power to help scope projects such that they include a women-centric lens from the get go. This is important because if we miss the needs of women in defining our problem space, we are likely to miss them altogether.
The 4 Categories:
Harmful
Solutions that present as serving women, but cause harm instead.
Existing services being turned pink without any change to actually understand women's needs
Programs that glorify women's economic empowerment, often in harmful ways
EXAMPLES
Pinking & shrinking: existing services being turned pink which are expected to meet women's needs as a result. Often these products and services are also reduced in quantity and/or priced higher than usual.
No problem validation: products created just to sell to women without problem or solution validation. The Pinky Glove is a great example of this.
Glorifying women's empowerment: Multi-level marketing schemes are known to target women to sell them a dream of financial autonomy, often leaving them in debt.
Impartial
Solutions that present as “gender-neutral,” but are prone to creating unintended consequences for women.
Products & services that ignore biological differences and gendered responsibilities
Operate within established stereotypes
EXAMPLES
Overlooking biological differences and gendered responsibilities: From health to yoga apps, voice recognition tech and snow clearing policies – women's bodies and their lived experiences which often include responsibilities such as caregiving, are overlooked.
Only serving the default female: these solutions see women as a monolith and fail to understand the diversity of lived experience among women. For example, the EEG machine is not designed for black women's hair.
Falling prey to stereotypical masculinity and femininity traps: my favourite example of this is the contraceptive brand in India that chooses to call itself 'Manforce' in a country where sexual harassment is rampant.
Informed
Solutions that design for women as a majority audience, often in traditional women-oriented domains.
Products & services meeting women's needs but in areas such as beauty, fashion, reproductive health.
Solutions are just scratching the surface of a much larger untapped potential.
EXAMPLES
Acknowledge women's needs but through a narrowed lens: for example, although we are seeing action towards the much needed boom in femtech, solutions often focuses on pregnancy vs. overall reproductive health which would also include menopause, endometriosis, uterine fibroids etc.
Designing for the "default female" within a women's domain: femtech solutions don't take into account diverse lived experiences, for example, they do not account for maternal mortality rates being higher for black women and women of colour.
Keeping women's services separate: the Nike Training App is a great example that has gone the extra mile in acknowledging women's menstrual cycle, but their "regular" workouts do not mention menstruation at all.
Holistic
Solutions that equitably serve women by meeting their otherwise overlooked needs, no matter the domain.
Solutions that create new definitions and narratives to defy social norms, roles and stereotypes.
Solutions that center around an issue pertaining to women, but end up solving for many beyond them.
EXAMPLES
Creating new definitions & narratives: Apps such as Bumble redefined gender roles in dating, microcredit apps such as Tala created new definitions of credit histories, the Coralus platform is expanding the definition of investing and investors.
Building for root causes: recognising that sexual assualt survivors are discouraged to report incidents, Callisto takes on the onus of collecting proof and identifying repeat offenders.
Centering women's needs but cater to many beyond them: Sehat Kahani is a tele-health app that hires women doctors, thereby increasing their economic empowerment. In addition, they are able to increase healthcare access for everyone.
Applying the Women-Centric Eye
A co-visioning exercise:
The purpose of this exercise is to imagine a more women-centric solution. Something I realised over the course of building the toolkit is how hard it is to actually imagine the future we want to create. But, we cannot create what we cannot imagine — and this exercise helps us build our imagination muscle.
To prepare: familiarise yourself with the four categories of the Women-Centric Eye and choose any product / service / solution that others in your team or group are familiar with. Could be an app, or something generic like 'public transport.'
To do: Imagine the characteristics your chosen solution would exhibit if it is harmful, informed and holistic. (Note that impartial is missing because chance are the chosen product is already impartial).
An opportunity identification exercise:
The purpose of this exercise is to identify opportunity areas within a product or service that can make the experience more women-centric. What I love about this one is that it lets us realise that every solution has room for improvement.
To prepare: familiarise yourself with the four categories of the Women-Centric Eye and choose any product / service / solution that others in your team or group are familiar with. Choose a specific product or service such as "LinkedIn."
To do: break the chosen product down into its product features, branding, narratives, service design etc. Place each of these into the quadrant of the matrix where you think it belongs. Discuss your choices with your team and identify opportunity areas for impact.
Why a matrix vs. a continuum
Less linearity, more nuance: women's lived experiences are nuanced, diverse, intersectional. Alongside, products and services are multi-dimensional with many aspects to them (the solutions they provide, the narratives they build, etc.). The matrix acknowledges both, allowing for products/services to be both harmful and holistic at the same time and therefore leading to richer conversations which can help us identify opportunity areas to design better for women.
Always more room for holistic: during the research for Women-Centric Design, a gender practitioner said to me: "contexts are always evolving, and so should products." The matrix allows us to see that that women-centricity isn't binary and there is always room for solutions to become increasingly more holistic.
Women's concerns are everyone's concerns: the y-axis of the eye measures if the solution designs for a majority women audience. Moving into the holistic quadrant means that a product or service sees and meets women's needs without needing to separate and become a "women's-only" product. It makes women's concerns everyone's concerns.