The Bic For Her - a pen for women, naturally available in pink - may have caused offence and attracted ridicule in equal measure (including here), but it's nevertheless a depressing if unsurprising truth that things are all too often designed for men rather than for women. Time and again, the default citizen/consumer is male. Sometimes, this can even be a matter of life and death - take CPR mannequins, crash test dummies and stab vests, for instance.
There are those who have highlighted and tried to counteract that bias, though - St Vincent, for example, who has created a guitar more "sympathetic to the female form", and the Matrix Feminist Design Co-Operative, who in the 1980s set out to challenge the widespread presumption of architects and planners that the urban environment should be designed with an ideal male user in mind.
Matrix's history and work is the subject of a new exhibition at the Barbican in London called How We Live Now. Some people might scoff at the idea of feminist architecture, but in truth the principles they espoused were eminently sensible for any form of design work: transparency, accessibility, consultation with end users and careful consideration of their needs and desires, rather than sticking belligerently to abstract theories or making decisions based on unfounded assumptions. Practices may be changing gradually, but Matrix's approach still has much to teach those who shape the world around us.
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