female

They made the appointment together, father and daughter, to find out what the bachelor’s program in design management is all about. Apparently, she was looking for a program that would allow her to pursue her affinity for creativity, whereas Dad seemed to have something in mind that would lead to a solid job qualification and be of real value in the economy as he knows it. That’s why the ‘management’ in the program’s title seemed to ease him a bit, and accordingly, he was very curious to find out what the heck ‘design’ had to do with it.

If it was their attempt to find a compromise between them that brought them into my office, I cannot tell, but during our conversation, it became clear to me that she was there mainly because of the design, and he only because of the management. What a cliché, I can hear you mumble, but it’s a fact that women currently apply to the design management program 5 times more often than men. So that’s why the situation was no surprise to me: the consideration for design management came from her.

How ‘delicate’ the situation really is, I also experienced during the selection procedure for this year’s class: there we had to determine who would be our new ‘fresh(wo)men’. After the first selection round, some lecturers were considering appealing for a quota for men to avoid the class being solely ‘manned’ by women.
And to be honest, the male applicants were really struggling to stand up to the phalanx of highly motivated females, who presented themselves in perfect condition, meticulously prepared, and passed the selection procedure with class and style: very focused and mature, the girls presented their work to the members of the selection committee, who were repeatedly left speechless by the competencies they displayed. The boys, in comparison, almost seemed unmotivated and confused and repeatedly had to be reminded to get going …
After the selection procedure was done, the first 8 spots were all taken by girls, totaling 16 out of 20 …

The fact that predominantly women are interested in the design management course is definitely not related to the attractiveness of the lecturers (who are indeed mainly men, which is also ‘delicate’). No, the reason is something very fundamental and stems from aspects of the program that go far beyond an artificial level. Also, the often-used reasoning that the ‘creative bit’ attracts women toward design is too simplistic: in other ‘creative’ study programs, you’ll find both sexes equally represented, though there are differences in the nature of where creativity is applied. Next to that, the title ‘ related to the design management’ cannot be compared to e.g. ‘engineering’, where the title already sets the tone and hints at a future occupation for graduates: ‘engine creation’ – which is clearly appealing to males. Compared to engineering, design management is rather gender-neutral and open to interpretation.

What I think attracts women most to design management is the competence that results from study: enabling creativity and design to flourish in organizations and helping to turn them into reality. To achieve this, design management demands encompassing and flexible thinking, one that can use ‘both sides of the brain,’ so to say, and can shift between logical, analytical thinking and creative, abstract thinking. This ‘female’ form of thinking is not one that wants to ‘mother,’ but one that can view the issue from another angle and thus see things hidden to the very focused and stringent ‘masculine’ way of observing – it’s a view of the whole, not of the detail: a holistic point of view.
Of course, males can think this way, no worries, but it’s generally not ‘biologically’ accessible to them, nor is it well developed. Likewise, I know female engineers who think as guys do, but who are definitively ‘biologically’ female: but these are very rare.

When I was trying to explain to my visitors how design management, in its optimal form, would establish this holistic way of thinking within organizational structures and, with that, enable the creation of relevant and human-centered solutions, I thought, for instance, that my dad was seeing something in it. He confessed to being a manager and then stressed that he would like his daughter to do something that could play a significant role in international business. Well, apparently ‘design’ alone seemed a bit too creative and less career-supportive to him…
Now I am curious to see how this continues and whether I can welcome the daughter into my program for the coming year, but foremost, I am curious whether something did stick with daddy…

Since their visit, many people have shown interest in the program and have knocked on our door, of whom, as expected, 80% were female. If it’s meant to be that a human-centered business will prevail as the more sustainable and successful way of doing business, and that women naturally provide the right thinking needed to shape and manage these businesses, will we need a quota in the future?