In recent years, much has been said and written about “bro culture,” and a toxic, heteronormative “boys’ clubs” mentality naturally contributes to feelings of exclusion in design, especially amongst female-identifying graduates first entering the field. In part, this has contributed to a climate where despite the fact that 70% of graphic design students are women, only 11% are Creative Directors. “I’ve always observed a strong sense of brotherhood in the workplace,” says Kim of her experience working in Seoul. “Smoking and drinking together is very common in Korea—and it’s important for networking. Whether or not you participate in these activities really effects whether you get work as a freelancer and who will collaborate with you.”

Malhotra also describes having felt excluded in Mumbai agencies from “the ‘I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine’ brotherhood.” She notes that an exclusionary mentality extends to the global design scene at large, too, which is not just overwhelmingly male in its tight-knit circles, but also overwhelmingly white: “I find few minority groups in design, mostly because there’s a lot of undercutting and cliquism (it's a small industry),” she says. “It’s hard enough to choose the instability of a creative job as a minority, but additionally one has to gain access to networks that don’t necessarily prioritize making you feel welcome.”

For Isabel Seiffert, one-half of Switzerland’s Offshore Studio, intimidating “boys club” networks deterred her from applying to the studios that she was most interested in after graduating. “I felt like I didn’t know a single woman who had a job that I wanted,” she says. “Instead, I could see all these male designers I admired hanging out in big groups of other men having beers together, sharing images of themselves on social media. I’d see one guy using the typeface of another; I’d see them wearing each others’ t-shirts, and creating this hype around themselves. You see that there are these bro friendship circles—and you see that that’s how jobs get distributed.” Experiences like these help contextualize the reasons for a landscape lacking in women in leadership roles (in 2015, The Drum’s list of the top 100 “designerati” featured only 13 women.)

When anyone feels uncertain about their own validity in a certain space, they’re less likely to speak up, creating a cycle in which one’s own lack of confidence leads to taking fewer risks and, therefore, being less trusted as a leader by colleagues. “A confident or even over-confident person will jump in and try something, even when they might not succeed,” says design historian and educator Ellen Lupton, whose writing on women in design has greatly informed a growing dialogue in recent decades. “Furthermore, those who do express confidence may be penalized in the workplace, creating another negative cycle.”

As an educator at the Maryland Institute College of Art in the USA, Lupton observes how a gendered “confidence gap” entrenches itself early on in the classroom. “Women make up the majority of our students, and women from Asia are a growing group,” she says. “Thus, the male students are a minority, and this scarcity may actually contribute to the prestige of the male within a classroom setting. In a room full of female students, many of whom come from cultures where deference to authority is valued over outspoken expression, the male students may emerge as creative leaders. It’s not enough that women, including women of color, are a large demographic group in a design program; faculty still have to create a context in which anyone can come forth and flourish.”

Such experiences—socially-constructed through gender and identity—are deeply formative and make it all the more challenging to break through the so-called glass ceiling. Biases undermine one’s confidence—sometimes subtly, sometimes less so. “Occasionally, during the first meeting with a client they’ll subconsciously walk towards my co-founder first, who’s a man,” oberseves Seiffert of Offshore Studio. And in response to such biases, a degree of additional emotional labor can be necessary—that practise of making others around you comfortable with your presence by acting in such a way that reinforces proscribed norms. “I’ve found the printers that I collaborate are mostly older guys; they’ll often try to advise you if you’re a woman, and tell you you’re doing it wrong,” adds Kim. “You have to be extra kind, smile even more, to get the printer to do what you want.”

Seiffert notes that there’s a double bind that occurs one needs to play two ultimately irreconcilable parts to succeed: “What are your options? You’re shy, or you’re confident. But if you’re confident, then you appear arrogant and people are repulsed by it. Either way, you’re trapped.” In patriarchal societies, confidence can often be seen as an abrasive quality, unless women can temper assertiveness with more stereotypically feminine traits like empathy. Such emotional labor, even when done successfully, can erode one’s perceived expertise.

“We can still see in some institutions the remnants of an ‘old boy’ culture, where gender stereotypes abound,” says Teal Triggs, an educator at the Royal College of Art in London, and co-founder of the influential Women’s Design + Research Unit (WD+RU) in 1994. Speaking from the perspective of working in design education, she notes that many “female educators are still marginalized in subtle ways such as being talked-over in meetings or seen in roles as educational caretakers rather than potential leaders.”