15 Manufacturing Gender in Commercial and Military Cockpit Design

While the first two selections in this section suggest that values can be designed into technology, it is important to remember that this is sometimes done deliberately and other times not. In this piece by Rachel Weber, we learn about a case in which a technology's design denied access to women, although this was not necessarily intentional. Designers often work with a specific set of users in mind; they may use data and specifications from that group or simply assume that most users will be similar to themselves. In so doing, however, the designed object may discriminate against other users—those not included in the data or those unlike the designers. (Winner makes a reference to this in chapter 12 when he mentions that buses, sidewalks, and buildings have often been designed in ways that discriminate against people in wheelchairs.) Once in place, a designed artifact can be very difficult to change and may continue to act as a barrier to certain groups. Here, however, Weber discusses a case study in which the "momentum" of the sociotechnical system was overcome. She describes how a concerned group of people successfully redesigned airplane cockpits to accommodate a larger number of female users. Project leaders were able to counter arguments that such a change would cost too much money, would take too much time, and would be resisted by some of those previously discriminated against because they did not want to appear to be receiving special treatment. In this respect, Weber's account illustrates both the unintentional incorporation of values into a design and the subsequent deliberate embedding of new values in a revised version of a technology.