Skittish Skirts and Scanty Silhouettes: The Tribulations of Gender in Modern Signage

Abstract

Signage, traffic signs and way-finding systems are the focus. Whether the pictograms used in such systems may be said to work through mechanisms of visual metaphor or not is the question addressed here, they certainly use pictures of individual objects to express abstract concepts. This requires learning and context for understanding. Nevertheless pictography seems to have other limitations. When compared to verbal language, a major example of these limitations is the representation of gender. In 2005, a survey of 49 signage systems at the University of Aveiro concluded that the female gender was under represented and heavily stereotyped. Notwithstanding, the article analyses a few recent attempts to use non-sexist traffic signs and signage, in order to determine whether it is possible to reform or improve pictographic languages.