This article was written in 2015. It might or it might not be outdated. And it could be that the layout breaks. If that’s the case please let me know.

Where did they go?

There are quite a few things that struck me in this article by Lynne Yun on the brilliant new Alphabettes site. One of the things she writes is that when she jumped into the corporate world of Typography and Design she was shocked how male-oriented the business was. In recent years I became very aware of this fact, but before that I thought this male domination was normal. And as long as the people who dominate an industry, in this case white males, don’t see this as a problem, it’s very hard to change it. I think this is starting to change in certain places.

Lynne writes that she was especially shocked since she just came from a gender-neutral classroom environment. I see the same thing at our university: I haven’t counted, but I guess 50% of my students is female. And when I look at the agencies where my students should aspire to find a job, the percentage is much, much lower. Lynne asks the question

Could it be that women didn’t want to work at these places for specific reasons that I wasn’t seeing? If not, where did all these educated women go after they earned their diplomas?

That’s a very good question. Unfortunately she doesn’t answer it. But I really do wonder, where does all that talent go?