Women in the Media: Communication Design, Research and Experimentations

Currently, the debate regarding women’s representation in the most diffused media (e.g., advertising, journalism, television, internet) is front and centre. It is common opinion that in our everyday life we encounter images that depict female figures as degrading and stereotypical models. The problem is not only connected to the idea of an imaginary male spectator that has to be pleased, it is also an issue that concerns the cultural and social dimension of Communication Design. As designers, we have to intervene in the design project with a critical realism within the social context, we have to work from a multidisciplinary perspective to develop new tools, new formats, and new artefacts that are able to change the ways of seeing, consuming and distributing images. This could be a starting point to generate positive actions, lifelong learning and active encouragement in our society. In this paper we present the ongoing research and experimentation activities of the research group“dcxcg” (communication design for gender cultures) that operates, from the perspective of design, with the goal of offering a critical view of the forms of representation of gender (i.e., female, male), but also to support the proposal of new models of communication in the context of education.