I was contacted by a company the other day who were looking for a web designer, they were keen to hear from any one interested in a full time web design/developer position (the job is posted on the free graphic design blog jobs board), but especially from female web designers to balance out their development team. They expressed that there seemed to be a lack of women web designers. I must admit it is something I have never really thought about.
So is it true are more web designers/developers male and why is this? Is it because many women are put off by the coding aspect of web design and prefer the more creative freedom of print? My partner works in construction which is a male dominated area, but he has said that in the last few years women are coming in to the industry more on the management side. When he started in his old job there were no female quantity surveyors, when he left there were several including his boss. This was due to promotion of the industry to women. Maybe web development needs the same push?
What are you thoughts, is the area of web development male dominated?
This post is from Graphic Design Blog
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23 Comments
I dont agree with that statement… in our group of 6 desingers – we’re only two guys.
I would say there are more women than people suspect. Many people don’t think/know about it, I feel, because the women in web design are busy doing their jobs rather than making it known that there are women in web design, or that there should be more women in web design… etc. That’s how it should be.
However, it’s good that people would like to see more women, if only because it brings new/different perspectives to the playing field, which is always good in the design industry.
I can tell you that there are not many women in web design that I know of. I’m a female web designer and I’m the lone girl in a group of 10 at my day job. I’ve joined a web design meetup group and so far there’s only been 2 other women that have come to the meetings, typically it’s just me and a bunch of guys.
I’m not sure why women aren’t doing the web design gig as much as guys are though. I’ve noticed less women in the industry at work and when looking at presenters for conferences, 90-95% of them are guys.
From my personal experience there’s more guys in the webdesign industry, especially when we get over to the development side of things.
In my head it has something to do with the fact that a lot of guys have started out by just messing around with computers. It’s been accepted for young males to have their LAN parties and gaming all night/week for years. I know that this is changing for girls too but we still have a massive head start. I hope to see more girls coming in and I can see that this is happening in our resume pile..
Ironically, there was an article in the Computer Arts magazine about women in web design. It’s really an insightful article.
Personally, I don’t come across lots of female developers, but I am always looking for and supporting the good ones I do find!
I think there are fewer women in web design/dev roles; in australia anyway. I believe that there are many many reasons why this. One which i find always starts a good debate is that generally (and i mean generally), women enjoy communication more than men. They are also much better multi-taskers then men and this is why you see more women as online producers, requirements gatherers, project managers etc in the field of online design/development. Web design is a very ‘mechanical’ process, it can require a lot of tinkering with code bits, finite particles that make up a whole, kind of like construction or being a mechanic. Men tend to get more satisfaction out of spending 4 days debugging 1000 lines of code, or getting an engine to work that hasn’t worked for 40 years where as a woman would think “i’m not gonna waste my time with that, i’ll work on building client relationships because it’s more fun and it will get us more work.” It’s a lovely relationship really and although there are obviously crossovers i think it’s a very intriguing question, great post Tara.
I’ve been wondering the same recently. Working primarily as a web designer myself for the last few years, any dealings I’ve had with other companies have been with male developers and designers (barring one).
Coming out of college we had a relatively healthy balance of male / female graduates, all of whom would have spent at least three of the four years deep in web development yet I can only think of 3 or 4 of the female side who are now actively involved in the industry.
Even when I’ve advertised job positions or had CVs land in my inbox, they’ve all been from male senders.
I have seen this same question posted in different places on the web over the past few months. Interesting question but it must mean it’s understood rule that men are at the helm of most all web companies?
Means maybe the women who in fact are freelancers or web company owners are not promoting their company as a woman owned business?
I am a woman, and own a web design/hosting/development company. I guess I have been so focused on the fact of gaining customers for my services and products.
But all in all, it’s something to think about….
I think overall there are more men in technology-related fields than there are women. Why? Perhaps because they like tinkering and figuring out problems and they are very competitive. I definitely think that there is a surge of women in design and web design in recent years, though.
The 2007 ALA survey was interesting to look at in regards to men vs. women and what positions they hold. Of the respondants, there were by far the most women in web writing/editing positions, but fewer in the coding side (see p30 of the survey for the gender break down by job title).
When I enrolled in my design course I half expected the class to be comprised of mostly women, so I was surprised when it turned out that men were in the (slight) majority.
I find screen-based design very satisfying for various reasons. I love the fact that it’s a medium which is constantly and rapidly evolving, which maintains the challenge for me as a designer. Also, I get satisfaction from knowing that my web designs have potentially a far greater audience reach than most print design jobs.
For much of last year and the early part of this year I was working as an animator, and I worked out that, out of approximately 25 animation/design staff, 5 were women. I figure that there’s an obvious connection for the guys between computer games and a career in animation. Male dominance in web design is a bit of a mystery though. It’s an interesting question.
When I enrolled in my Graphics course, I expected it to be mostly men on the course. Infact, out of 15 students, there is 1 bloke.
In a weeks time, I’ll be deciding whether my first design job will be as a junior web designer. What web design I have done so far at home has been brilliant. I love the whole aspect of tinkering with the code, and making “the machine” work.
My partner is a senior web designer, and all the other web designers I know are male. But its like all jobs these days. There arent just jobs for men and jobs for women. I once worked in a childrens nursery where there was a male member of staff, in his mid 30′s. 10-20 years ago, this might have seemed odd, but not so much now.
Hi Tara
It does seem that there are fewer women web designers. When I first started working in web design, I was on a team of 6 designers and there were 2 of us lay-days on the team. When I went back to do my masters, there was 8 in the class but only two boys.
Maybe the women are a little quieter on the promotion front? Either that or we’re just too busy darning socks for our menfolk.
I think that there are certainly not many women programmers, but I think that the number of women-designers is definitely increasing. Though it’s true that this field is still male dominated. There were always more guys than girls in my classes when I used to teach web design, but I think it’s simply because there are indeed more men in the technology-related fields, like Lauren said. I’ve had several female students whose programming skills were surpassing those of their fellow classmates.
I think Jennifer hit the nail on the head – socks will be the downfall for women
In my experience there are few women in web design at the moment but I think the situation is changing.
Now is an ideal opportunity for female designers to get involved in web design and development as the industry is fracturing into many smaller components and women have much better multitasking skills.
There are many aspects a web developer has to consider these days, interface design is important but so too is usability, optimisation, website promotion, marketing, branding and the increasing influence of social networking sites such as Facebook.
Too many balls(pardon the pun!) for freelance male website developers to juggle on their own these days, ladies we need your multitasking help.
Well, hello all, a great discussion! I’m the the person who approached Tara originally about finding female web designers and I can give you the results we’ve achieved. We had 37 respondents, of whom 2 were female. Unfortunately, one of those was woefully inadequate in terms of artistic ability (ie none!), the second we’re waiting to see.
So, I guess I was (sadly) right…. not sure who we’re hiring as yet, but in general, the quality of applicants was not high. I guess all the good ones, male or female, are all happy where they are….!
thanks to all for their thoughts!
Tim
Hi Tim
Good to hear back from you about how you got on.
Tara
I’m astonished that this question even surfaces, even more so am I astonished to see how little women applied for the job. Ever since I am in design, it had seemed quite balanced and on either side of gender the same amount of good talent, but in the recent years and dealing a lot with online designers, I did not pay as much attention to it.
When I had been heavily involved with 3D, I had been one of the very few women in the field (on a list it was a ratio of 1:100 or so of the list members) and at the time it was assumed it has to do with the right/left brain and 3D requiring too much spacial and technical thinking, but I know many women who excel just at these abilities. Seeing now a similar question popping up and again with the code/creative aspect lets me think that after all there might be some truth to it.
odd, isn’t it.
From my experience; web designers tend to be male, graphic designers is 50/50 split of male/female.
You make a very interesting point. I suppose it all comes down to the old nature, nurture debate. Are we conditioning people from the cradle towards certain professions based upon there gender? Or is it innate in us to this on our own accord.
I have certainly found that there are more female graphic designers than female web designers relatibely speaking.
The ladies that are in the industry tend to listen a little more I find… unlike my wife!
Good article tara, I find that alot of web designers are male for some reason unknown. although it shouldn’t really matter.
I agree with the one comment above… I think there are more female web designers than people realize. I know many woman who are full time moms but build websites on the side for extra cash and do it from home. I can see how maybe the full time office positions may be more male oriented.