Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Where Are Women in Business?

As a graphic designer it is often my job to create images tailored to the needs of clients and/or potential customers. Often when creating logos or flyer images I'll look at the ideals and concepts that are being aimed for and try to find reference images that help guide me to then establish those logos and images. 

As the Graphic Designer/Marketing Director for Promote Her Business I've been asked to create women-focused images and logos for various events and even the business itself. The PHB logo for example was inspired/derived from the Symbol for "Female" and a Cell Tower representing "Promoting" and "Getting the Word Out".

Reference Images used:


Image Created:


Recently I've been asked to create logos for events and networking mixers that focus on several key aspects of women in business. I was given 5 words to help inspire these logos and also knew to keep the images consistent with the color scheme and PHB logo itself. Unfortunately when I went to look up reference images as I have done before, I found it challenging to find pictures that included women in them or involved them at all. The 5 words I was trying to find concepts/ideas for were:

Business, Success, Leadership, Collaboration, and Networking 

When I went to iStock, Shutterstock, and Google Images to find some reference pictures under these 5 different words and related concepts, 90% of them depicted Men in Business Suites, but few if any showed women. This is a problem I've run into before. It seems strange to me that women comprise such a large percentage of the work force and consumer market and yet are so underrepresented in business materials. 

About a year ago, out of curiosity, I actually decided to look up the word "Beauty" on several image sites (iStock, Shutterstock, Google Images, and Deviantart). I honestly wondered what it would be like for an alien to come down from outer space, land on this planet, and then try to find out about our culture solely from the internet and what he would find out about us based on the images that came up. Here is what I found and typed after doing my research: 

"My first stop was at Shutterstock. This is a place where people buy photos to implement in graphic design-related advertisements. I typed in the word “Beauty” to see what would come up. 90% of the first page consisted of women. I wrote down the first impressions of what I saw: women, flower, woman holding flower, hair, skin, nude women, makeup, clothes, floral vector designs, women at the spa, facials, women posing. Then I went to page 2: women, 1 waterfall, 1 overly colorfied landscape, and women… It was 95% women.
I then decided to go to iStock, which is similar just to see how these two sites interpreted the same word: Beauty. Page 1: 1 sky pic, 1 little girl in a meadow, flowers, women, “family”, 1 peacock feather. It was about 70% women. Then I went to page 2: women, women, women… literally All different photographs of women.
 
Then it was time to venture over to Deviantart.com –a place where young and professional artists post all media of art including photography, paintings, drawing, digital imagery… Page 1: Rainbow colors, abstract photography with varied colors, henna tattoo, flowers, 1 beauty shot, a drawing of a decaying skeleton woman, a nude woman, a bubble, plants. Page 2: women, Beauty and the Beast, Pamela Anderson charicature, abstract rainbow pictures, fantasy drawings with young women being maidens, a digital image of a woman with her head on a bust. Page 3: 4 Beauty and the Beast's, 1 girl’s smile, Pamela Anderson again, 1 nude woman
 
Then I went to Google Images and typed in Beauty. 100% ALL WOMEN –mostly beauty shots and glam shots, some makeup. 
I take these 4 sites to represent 3 different demographics: 1 the Advertising World, 2. The Artist’s/Individual Girl’s Views, 3. Our Society’s Commonly Held Views. 
Shutterstock and iStock seem to focus mostly on promotional marketing with Beauty products. Glam shots of hair, close up on lips, spa treatments, makeup, skin… all can easily be seen in magazine ads and so on for different women’s beauty products. 
Deviantart.com seems to have some level of resistance to the concept of women’s beauty. There were some glam shots as well, but no “makeup” shots or photos that could be used to market one product in particular. A lot of the pictures had to do with the classic movie Beauty and the Beast. Some of the pictures really raged against women being associated with beauty –like the skeleton woman, the woman whose head and bust were on a statue bust like a pedestal, and one picture I saw of a flower coming out of a page drawing of a flower entitled “Inner Beauty Coming Out”. These pictures seem to be more introspective and all the pictures of overtly busty women were drawn in a mocking way to trash that kind of “ideal” for a woman’s figure. 
Google showed the images most commonly posted/associated with the word beauty. Some could have easily been marketed for women’s products and some were just shots of beautiful faces –in some ways making women’s beauty seem as if too could be a marketable product." 
My friend recently posted on a Facebook that a recent study shows "By the age of 13, 53 percent of girls say they are unhappy with their bodies." I guess we can see why. Society, whether subconsciously or intentionally, seems to place the responsibility of being beautiful on women more than being successful in other areas of life -especially in business. It's sad that women hold so much potential to be great at anything they choose to pursue in life, but the only real value they are ever really noted for is whether they are physically attractive or not. 

More frustratingly, it is hard to find representations of women in any role other than being beautiful. From a marketing stand point it is ridiculous that more images of women in the business field cannot be found. I hope in time this changes, and maybe it starts with us. If you can't find images of women being successful in business -then create them yourself. If you can't find women succeeding in business around you -then help women in business achieve success, including yourself.

No comments:

Post a Comment