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Gendered Design in STEAM for Lower-and-Middle-Income-Countries is a three year program (2019-2022) facilitated by Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Starting in 2019, the Gendered Design in STEAM (GDS) project has been investigating and advancing gendered design through 20 IDRC-awarded grants across the global south. The 20 selected research teams come from Africa, Asia & Latin America.

Scholars in humanities, social sciences, and design are actively transforming the traditional science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) fields into something with a more human-centred approach, taking STEM to STEAM by including the arts. This is YouTube channel contains videos from the Gendered Design in STEAM (GDS) program.

With 30 years of applied international development experience, Julie is a strategic leader of mission- and impact-driven organizations, across the not-for-profit and public sectors.

Batik is an artistic technique that is created by applying wax to fabrics in specific patterns, followed by dyeing the fabric repeatedly until it has achieved the desired design and colour. In Tanzania, the batik industry is dominated by small and medium firms, mainly led by women in both rural and urban areas who practice the art of batik usually in their own homes.

The research project is based on a housing movement called “Mutirão” which emerged at the end of the 1980s, where residential areas were constructed on the outskirts of populated cities in Brazil. This collective activity is usually led by women (around 80%) who organize, coordinate, and work on-site.

In Lagos State, Nigeria, fish processing is a female-centric occupation dominated by traditional smoke-drying technologies that exhibit occupational hazards and fuel inefficiencies. Among fish processors in the small-scale fisheries sector, there has been limited success to introduce home grown technologies for adoption. Campaigns against the use of firewood and switching to charcoal have not been successful.

This project developed seminars with professors, undergraduate, and graduate students from a variety of disciplines in order to come up with innovative design approaches to the issue of gendered violence in Ciudad Juárez.

This research addresses the issue of care work as mostly assumed by women and focuses on the unequal distribution of care services and infrastructures in fragmented cities. This project is located in the city of Córdoba, in the underserved neighbourhoods of Marechal, Villa Páez and Alberdi. The project utilized quantitative and qualitative mapping to understand gendered urban experiences related to care, and how these are omitted in current urban planning discourses.

The energy transition to renewable sources, along with energy efficiency and management, are areas where women should be engaged actively. This research project aims to design and develop a prototype in the form of a computational model for a system using a vertical-axis wind turbine which can later be scaled-up for domestic use in Mauritius and other small islands.

The project aims to understand the potential of technology to provide women in Pakistan equitable access to employment opportunities and safe spaces for their narratives of workplace violence and harassment. The research team conducted a qualitative study of female factory workers in regions of Lahore and Faisalabad districts to understand their experiences of harassment and marginalization.

African civilization has traditionally been patriarchal, and this male-centered inclination permeates all facets of daily life, including the way we think about product design. Most of the user’s centered design framework is very generic and lacks the inclusiveness that is expected to address specific related design issues. Gender-centered design, a particular user-centered design paradigm, has recently risen to the forefront of product thinking.

Fishing is the main occupation of the people of Akwa Ibom state of Nigeria. Women constitute more than 90% of the personnel involved in traditional fish preservation, handling, and marketing. The study was concerned with improved and gendered design of traditional fish Drying Technology, to address some lagging challenges in operations in the traditional fish drying cottage industry. Traditional fish drying methods are inadequate, inconveniencing, and dangerous to health.

Since the early 1990s, gender mainstreaming has been developed as a tool to help in implementing new policies in different areas, however, this tool has not been properly utilized in the transport sector. This project focuses on including gender mainstreaming in the research of the transport system in Kigali City, Rwanda.

This study qualitatively analyzes the individual and social well-being of female breast cancer survivors who underwent mastectomies in Pernambuco, Brazil. This study focuses on the potential of design as a vehicle for the resignification of self-image by women who have undergone mastectomies due to breast cancer, and to aid in reducing negative perceptions about their bodies.

Financial literacy is low amongst women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, resulting in increased poverty stemming from the lack of command over their own economic resources. This study investigated the financial literacy of women and explored the sociocultural and psychological factors that hinder or encourage utilization of financial opportunities open to women.

This research aimed to identify the impact of the gender policies implemented by the University of Buenos Aires, specifically on the spaces and everyday uses of its campus spaces. In order to understand how students, faculty, and staff perceive and appropriate campus space, the team carried out a massive online survey as well as an ethnographic study of social media accounts discussing campus spaces.

This project explored gendered design in housing and public spaces in Rwanda to identify gendered issues and suggest guidelines to make spaces more accessible for all genders. Data was collected through visits to different universities, institutions and public spaces and surveys given to policymakers and beneficiaries. A gender analysis tool helped to identify how gender can be implemented in the design of spaces and a report with guidelines was written.

During development before birth and throughout life, the human body can be mutilated or amputated due to a variety of causes. This study investigates how 3D printing as an innovative technology can be utilized for prostheses production for women with visible disabilities caused by domestic violence, accidents, medical conditions, or cancer treatment.

This project builds on ongoing work in the neighborhood of Bélen in Bogotá to resist gentrification and redevelopment efforts through the creation and expansion of community spaces with a gendered perspective. Researchers from Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano worked with a local group of women, the Circle of Women Aisha, to create a community kitchen and expand and renovate an existing community garden at a local community space Casa B.