Abstract:

The world of digital technologies and STEAM is still predominantly male-dominated. As demonstrated both by the statistics according to which they represent about 1/3 (https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-statistics-progress-and-challenges) of the student/workforce population, and the culture of many technology companies – with reference to the latest statements regarding ‘masculine energy’ made by Mark Zuckerberg on 13/1/2025 on Bloomberg Youtube Channel after the election of the new president of the United States (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=MAw9Tpi4B_U) – these areas do not seem appealing or welcoming to women. Just think of the need to promote the education of girls in technical/technological fields, starting with days like Ada Lovelace Day (second Tuesday of October since 2009) or the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (promoted since 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and organised annually on 11 February by UNESCO in collaboration with UN Women).

In this context, we see instead that the female population is decreasing in most degree courses in design and art, which, however, offer a significant number of courses directly or indirectly related to the learning and use of digital technologies, both as tools for other design practices and as products, artefacts or systems designed by the students themselves. For instance, in the Italian degree course in industrial design (L-4), female students comprise 62.7% of the student population, and in the Master's degree course (LM-12), they make up 64.3% of the total.

Therefore, teaching subjects such as digital design, which lies at the intersection of design and technology, prompts us to consider how to highlight women's contributions, their talents, and their unique perspectives or approaches to design, if they exist.

The issue becomes even more urgent when we consider how these biases are reproduced, concentrated and stored in the artificial intelligences with which we increasingly interface, converse and delegate significant parts of our critical thinking and knowledge of the world.

This paper presents, discusses and reflects on the “Do You Know Her Name?” workshop, now in its third year. The workshop aims to raise students' awareness of the role and contribution of women in digital design through participatory and hands-on activities, and to teach them to design and critically reflect on the social constructs that lead to their exclusion from cultural and scientific debate. The paper also compares and discusses the results of the workshop with those of previous editions, highlighting the evolution of this topic over the years within the Digital Design course of the Bachelor’s Degree in Design and Art at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.

Keywords:

Digital Design, Women in digital design, learning-by-doing, women designers.