Editor’s note: The Gender Equity Toolkit is a 2017 collaboration between AIGA’s Women Lead Initiative (WLI), and Disrupt Design, a creative agency led by designer and sociologist Leyla Acaroglu, specializing in social and environmental changes. Laetitia Wolff, AIGA director of strategic initiatives, who steered the project, is now reviewing it. The kit, available to all AIGA members, is still a work in progress.
VV Tell me, what was the AIGA’s intent when you decided to invest time and energy into this initiative?
LW Our goal was to bring visibility to the disparity in women leadership positions. When you look at the stats, women earn today 80 percent of what men earn. That’s scary. Advocating for a policy change is a rather abstract wish—no silver bullet for that, and anyway, where do you start?! But to play a game and educate people to lean into uncomfortable conversations is a small, manageable step toward addressing gender bias.
VV The toolkit is quite experimental, isn’t it? It contains instructions for a set of exercises and games designed to promote gender empathy between players. You went out in the field and tested it—what reaction did you get?
LW To start with, the Gender Equity Toolkit is the product of a design research process. Leyla Acaroglu conducted many interactive user-testing workshops with AIGA members, interviews, and behavioral observations before we published it. For the launch of the toolkit we produced an introductory webcast laying out the rules of the game. Then, while we were distributing it to our members, the AIGA asked members of the Women Lead Initiative committee to test it at small and large companies. It was a necessary step before providing additional guidelines to chapters and members on how to use it and measure its impact.
VV All the members of the Women Lead Initiative committee are women?
LW Yes, but men were involved in the testing—that was the point, wasn’t it? However, the preliminary feedback was collected from conversations I had with two women, cochairs of the WLI committee: Heather Stern, from the Lippincott brand agency, and Lynda Decker, president of Decker Design. We were also able to gain some insights garnered from Laura Kunkel, from Blue State Digital, a design consultancy, and from Rose Newton, who was senior design manager of IBM Austin studio until this summer.
VV What sort of reaction did they get from testing the kit?
LW At Blue State Digital, Laura Kunkel piloted the exercise last spring at a weekly analytics team meeting to a group consisting of five men and one woman across their New York and DC offices. Although they spent longer playing and discussing than expected, there was a palpable sense of anxiety, and many participants asked right away what the goal really was.
VV As you said, gender bias is a touchy subject for women to broach in the presence of men. Was one of the exercises less threatening to the groups?
LW Yes, the word game for which people free-associate, reacting to words spontaneously. At least three people mentioned they were somewhat surprised by the difference in emotional connections with words and reflected on their own assumption that most people would respond uniformly to words.
Similarly, at IBM, Rose Newton asked participants, “What kind of visual images did you get in your mind when the other player was explaining a word?” The word “house” seemed to reveal key gender differences: a few men reported thinking of the concept of purchasing and owning a home—which seemed gender neutral to them. However, when a woman explained her perspective on that same word, they were shocked. Indeed, she instantly attributed the word “house” to common gender tropes and stereotypes (taking care of the house, cooking dinner, cleaning, like a fifties housewife). Those same men had to admit that she was weighed down by such thoughts. They recognized the immediate gender bias of word associations.
VV How about the role-playing exercise that requires participants take turns being the boss? It’s quite challenging: the person in charge must turn down the employee’s request for a raise five times during the discussion!
LW After playing the scenario testing exercise, Rose asked the participants to tell her what it felt like to play a role and what insights they gleaned. A female participant said it felt weird to have to defend her position under pressure of “her employee” refusing to give up. She admitted it was challenging to stay creative and reframe her response to a salary increase request. “We did seem to reach an agreeable point relatively quickly though,” she said, adding that it helps when both people can negotiate and act professionally.
VV Any creative criticism?
LW At Blue State Digital, some participants said they would have preferred to be probed with a broader social context to think through while playing. It was particularly true in cross-gender pairings—Laura thought it was critical to do some tone setting before the exercise to make people feel at ease and to keep focus off of any individual blame. This game has the potential to trigger defensive feelings and behaviors, but Laura believes the Gender Equity Toolkit actually gives an intellectual buffer to dedramatize and deintellectualize gender issues and assumptions.
VV In my opinion, that’s what makes the toolkit so interesting: It does away with preambles and theories, and gives the participants direct access to the gender bias experience. But I am sure that you did some soul-searching before designing the toolkit and testing it.
LW You bet. In preparation of testing the game, the committee had considered open-ended questions that could potentially shape the way different groups would experience the game. Do you typically incorporate gender perspective in your work? What does success look like to you? Do you value mentorship? Did you have awareness of gender bias issues? Do we need a safe space to address these issues? These types of questions.
VV Will the testing phase of the kit be followed by a reevaluation of the project?
LW The main lesson we learned so far is that we need to provide context for this game. Heather Stern believes that the Gender Equity Toolkit is not meant to be a “gotcha moment.” However catalytic it may seem, we know that we will come across individuals or cultures that are not necessarily ready to embark on this conversation.
The soft launch has shed light on how sensitive the topic is. Although there is a real enthusiasm for it, it’s been more difficult than we thought. We need to continue asking ourselves how to set goals, provide context and flexibility on how to use the kit, and be proactive in measuring impact and the change in perception of gender bias.