Addressing gender bias in product designs to reach more women

The digital gap, which refers to users' unequal access to technology, disproportionately impacts women, who make up about half of any user population. For instance, The World Bank estimates that in low- and middle-income countries, more than 300 million fewer women than males use the internet.

Unfortunately, the gender-biased designs of many technology solutions worsen this problem. Geographical and cultural restrictions are hurdles for women adopting consumer electronics.

"Technology, in short, has the potential to exacerbate inequalities as much as it has the potential to equalize them," says Roberta Cozza, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. "Product managers risk losing market share and customer relevance if they ignore equity and inclusion dynamics, overlook users' diverse needs, or fail to address factors contributing to digital divides."

It is important to recognize and address these inequities in solution designs to close the digital gap that keeps women users from adopting technology.

Utilizing the customer's voice for tech adoption

Using the voice of the customer (VoC) to identify the many barriers affecting people across cultures, geographies, socioeconomic categories, and other crucial demographics will help launch efforts to close gaps in technology adoption for women. Product managers may lower these entry barriers and enhance the user experience for female customers by using information from VoC.

Ensure the VoC process is inclusive of assisting in dismantling rather than strengthening gender barriers. Analyze various bias-proofed customer and user experience metrics related to effort, usability, and engagement to find ways to connect with and serve female users. Product managers will better understand the product gaps when the needs of women consumers are disclosed, and they will be able to decide how to begin addressing the biggest obstacles or issue areas.

A mix of human-centric design practices

Product managers in the technology industry must make it a point to concentrate on design methodologies that consider "human" aspects in addition to "user" factors.

Using the word "user," the product design process focuses on the person using or operating a technology or solution. Finding and eventually comprehending "human" aspects, such as motives, values, behaviors, and specific goals for women who do and don't utilize technology, cannot be done based on this alone. Design thinking aims to understand the target audience's specific motivations, issues, worries, and expectations.

Through identifying new or additional points of inclusions/exclusions, overcoming bias in data, and recognizing higher complexities related to design for gender, inclusive design methods aid product managers in understanding the key elements and problems of gender-based designs.

Recognize more design complexities as gender discourse develops and steer clear of new instances of gender exclusion. For nonbinary people, for instance, the terms "woman" or "female" can be restricting. Because of this, design teams constantly need to be aware of the implications and potential benefits of larger gender-neutral parts.

Women's digital divide as technology users can be reduced through product design efforts. Working to increase gender representation on your teams and ensuring inclusivity from the beginning is one of the simplest measures you can practice immediately.