Mentoring in education. Female role models in italian design academic culture

It is widely recognized that mentors and tutors are empowering roles in education systems. Students can benefit to be raised in an inclusive environment in which senior peers or professors play a positive and significant role model. In particular, looking at the field of design studies, a tradition of collaborative and collective culture shared between students and teachers can be identified both in the Bauhaus and in the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm experiences. In more recent time, studies show how junior designers benefit from the presence, and the confront of significant grown-up or more experienced figures able to listen to, to coach and to mentor them. Nevertheless, when we look at the issue from a gender perspective, we may notice a lack of examples and reference figures, even if female students are a significant percentage, when not the majority, in the design’s bachelors and masters degrees university courses. Moreover, in Italy – at the 82 place on 144 in the worldwide ranking for gender equality and women rights according to the “Global Gender Gap Index 2017” – the situation seems to be more difficult than in the other European or developed countries, also due to the representation of female roles in society and female bodies in mass media. On the one hand, the paper offers a deeper insight into the problem. The results of a census in the field of digital product design – including human-centered, interaction, user experience and interface design – are mapped and discussed to understand the presence of female professors and their role in BA/BS and MD courses. On the other hand, the paper proposes some possible initiatives to spread consciousness and participation and to improve some changes in academic design culture.