Abstract
This conversation allowed mothers and non-mothers to connect with per- sonal stories and universal struggles during a supportive virtual moment. Some con- venors are design researchers, practitioners, students, and/or educators. This conver- sation also served as a space for designers to reflect on the role and responsibility of design in interrogating reproductive care systems in their current context. The goal of the convenors is to move toward and promote co-designing a preferable feminist fu- ture for mothers. There are few spaces like maternal health care and the experience of motherhood that would benefit simply through qualitative data collection, storytell- ing, retelling, and reflection. Oftentimes, a person’s unique experiences are over- looked pieces of data that are characterized by nuanced vulnerability. Storytelling and knowledge sharing have the power to shed light on complex systems, often over- looked, disenfranchised, or undervalued by the socially dominant. During this session, the convenors facilitated a virtual active dialogue that allowed participants to be hon- est, vulnerable, creative, and speculative.
Keywords
Motherhood, futures, feminism, speculative design, storytelling, qualitative data
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.958
Citation
McMahon, B., Benbrahim, D., Gibboney, R., and Doughty, A.H. (2022) Collective dialogues on motherhood for feminist futures, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 27 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.958
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Conversations
Included in
Collective dialogues on motherhood for feminist futures
This conversation allowed mothers and non-mothers to connect with per- sonal stories and universal struggles during a supportive virtual moment. Some con- venors are design researchers, practitioners, students, and/or educators. This conver- sation also served as a space for designers to reflect on the role and responsibility of design in interrogating reproductive care systems in their current context. The goal of the convenors is to move toward and promote co-designing a preferable feminist fu- ture for mothers. There are few spaces like maternal health care and the experience of motherhood that would benefit simply through qualitative data collection, storytell- ing, retelling, and reflection. Oftentimes, a person’s unique experiences are over- looked pieces of data that are characterized by nuanced vulnerability. Storytelling and knowledge sharing have the power to shed light on complex systems, often over- looked, disenfranchised, or undervalued by the socially dominant. During this session, the convenors facilitated a virtual active dialogue that allowed participants to be hon- est, vulnerable, creative, and speculative.