Who's car?
Posted on April 10, 2004 @ 14:48 in Gender
Wired runs an article about a Volvo concept car that has been shaped by the ideas and wishes of 8 women designers and marketers (who, according to other sources, also drew on the input of other women working for Volvo). Wired gushes:
After more than 100 years of male domination in the auto industry, women have for the first time taken the driver's seat in engineering a vehicle. A team of eight female Volvo engineers and marketers has developed a concept car that uses technology for comfort and safety, and hides the gadgetry that male gearheads savor. Volvo's project is seen as part of the auto industry's growing attention to the needs of female drivers.
The car looks pretty nice and those gullwing doors channel a bit of Mercedes 300SL luxury and good looks. I don't particularly get why the parallel parking sensors need a mention in this article because many high end cars not particularly pitched at a female audience have them nowadays. The simplified dashboard is something you see in quite a few concept cars and making the car's engine so low maintenance that basically you never have to lift the hood again makes good sense to me as well. In short, I'd say it's a car with some nice touches, but a car is a car and there's only so much any designer can do with it. The whole story about "women lead and women focused" design strikes me more as clever marketing speak, which is not to say that these women didn't do a good job or that car companies shouldn't put more women on their design teams! It's just that, as the quote says, car companies recognize they buying power of women and try to tailor their products to their tastes.
Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I think the photo taken at the presentation of the car at the New York International Automobile Show illustrates my point. It shows the 8 women designers kneeling in front of the car they (helped) design. This would make a good composition if it were not for the one man in the shot, who gets to stand up and, metaphorically speaking, approriates the car and the design by putting his hand on the opened gullwing door, the women kneeling at his feet. It's a bit disheartening to see these familiar patterns repeated, even at occasions where, at least in name, they are being challenged.
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