Every time you unlock your phone with facial recognition, ask Siri a question, or fill out a registration form that forces you to choose between „Male“ and „Female,“ you’re engaging in human-computer interaction. HCI – Human-Computer Interaction – is the field that studies and designs these moments of exchange between people and technology. It shapes the interfaces, systems, and experiences that mediate our digital lives.

But what happens when we put „feminist“ in front of HCI? The term „feminist HCI“ often provokes confusion, skepticism, or misunderstanding. Is it technology only for women? Design in pink? A rejection of male users?

None of these. Feminist HCI is something far more fundamental: it’s a lens for examining and challenging the power structures embedded in how we design, research, and deploy interactive technologies.

What Feminist HCI Is Not

Let’s start by clearing up common misconceptions.

It’s not „technology for women only.„ Feminist HCI isn’t about creating a separate digital sphere for women or designing „female-friendly“ versions of existing tools. This misunderstanding treats feminism as if it’s only concerned with women, when in reality, feminist theory addresses systems of power and oppression that affect everyone.

It’s not about aesthetic preferences. This isn’t about making interfaces pink, using rounded corners instead of sharp edges, or assuming that certain design elements appeal to certain genders. These approaches rely on stereotypes and actually reinforce the gender essentialism that feminist perspectives challenge.

It’s not technology without men. Feminist HCI benefits everyone. Men, too, are constrained by rigid gender expectations embedded in technology: from fitness trackers that assume certain body types to professional platforms that reinforce masculine communication norms.

It’s not a checklist item. You can’t make technology „feminist“ by adding diverse stock photos to your landing page or including a non-binary option in a dropdown menu (though these might be steps in the right direction). Feminist HCI requires examining the deeper structures and assumptions that shape how technology is made and who it serves.

So What Is Feminist HCI?

In 2010, HCI researcher Shaowen Bardzell published a landmark paper, „Feminist HCI: Taking Stock and Outlining an Agenda for Design,“ that articulated a framework for bringing feminist theory into human-computer interaction. Her work (and the growing body of research and practice that followed) offers us a way to understand what feminist HCI actually means.

At its core, feminist HCI asks questions about power:

• Who gets to design? Whose perspectives and experiences shape technological development?
• How is design done? What methods do we use, and whose voices do those methods privilege?
• Who benefits? Whose needs are centered, and whose are marginalized or ignored?
• What values are embedded? What assumptions about bodies, identities, relationships, and social structures are built into our systems?
• What effects does technology have? How does it redistribute power, and in whose favor?

Let’s explore these questions through several lenses.

Five Lenses for Feminist HCI

1. Who Designs: Representation and Positionality

The demographics of tech teams matter. When design and development teams lack diversity, particularly along lines of gender, race, class, ability, and other axes of identity , the technologies they create tend to reflect narrow, homogeneous perspectives.

Consider voice assistants like Alexa and Siri. Early versions defaulted to female voices and deferential personalities. They were designed primarily by teams of men, many of whom didn’t question the choice to make digital assistants female, subservient, and designed to tolerate abuse. This wasn’t malicious; it was invisible to them. The assumption that assistants should be female helpers replicated existing social patterns -patterns that become visible only when you ask „who designed this, and what were their assumptions?“

Feminist HCI calls for diverse teams, but also for reflexivity: designers examining their own positionality and how their perspectives shape their work. It’s not enough to have diverse people in the room; those people need to have genuine power to shape outcomes.

2. How We Design: Participatory and Inclusive Methods

Traditional HCI research often treats users as subjects to be studied- data points from which designers extract insights. Feminist HCI, drawing on feminist research methodologies, advocates for more participatory approaches.

This means:

• Involving communities in the design process from the beginning, not just as testers of nearly finished products
• Recognizing users as experts in their own experiences
• Creating space for marginalized voices that might otherwise be overlooked
• Questioning who gets to define „the problem“ that technology will solve

For example, apps for menstrual tracking have traditionally been designed around fertility and conception, reflecting assumptions about what matters to people who menstruate. When non-binary people, trans men, (peri)menopausal women and women not interested in pregnancy were included in design processes, it became clear that these apps needed to serve broader needs, for exaple, tracking symptoms for health reasons, managing dysphoria, or simply monitoring cycles without constant references to “fertility windows” and “babymaking“.

3. For Whom We Design: Interrogating the „Universal User“

Much of HCI design assumes a default user: typically imagined as able- bodied, techsavy, Englishspeaking, and comfortable with dominant cultural norms. This „universal“ user is actually quite specific, and designing for them means inadvertently designing against everyone else.

Feminist HCI questions this fiction. It asks: Who is excluded by our „universal“ design? What happens when we center different experiences?

Consider authentication systems. Facial recognition technology, for years, performed significantly worse at recognizing darker-skinned faces and women’s faces. This wasn’t accidental – the datasets used to train these systems overrepresented white and male faces. The „universal“ user was assumed to be white and male, making the technology literally not see others clearly.

Or consider form design. The ubiquitous „Male/Female“ dropdown menu excludes non-binary, genderqueer, and trans people who don’t identify with binary options. But it also collects data that’s often unnecessary -why does your pizza delivery app need to know your gender? Feminist HCI asks both „who is excluded?“ and „why are we collecting this data at all?“

4. What Values and Whose Interests Are Reflected in Design: Embedding Ethics in Interaction

Every design choice encodes values. The question isn’t whether our technologies embody values, but which values they embody and whose interests they serve.

Feminist theory offers particular ethical frameworks that can guide HCI design:

Consent: Rather than dark patterns that trick users into sharing data or accepting terms, what would meaningful consent look like? Not a wall of legal text, but genuine, informed choice.

Care: What if we designed for care rather than for growth metrics? What if success wasn’t measured by engagement or time-on-site, but by whether technology supported wellbeing and genuine connection?

Embodiment: How do our designs account for the reality that people have bodies: bodies that differ in ability, size, gender expression, and countless other ways? From VR systems that assume certain ranges of motion to health apps that pathologize bodies that don’t match narrow norms, many technologies fail to honor the diversity of embodied experience.

Privacy as autonomy: Not just privacy as data protection, but privacy as the ability to control what you share, with whom, and on what terms. This means rethinking surveillance-based business models and designing for genuine user autonomy.

5. With What Effects: Power and Justice

Finally, feminist HCI examines the broader effects of technology on power relations. Does this system reinforce existing inequalities, or does it redistribute power more equitably?

Consider content moderation systems on social platforms. Who decides what content violates community standards? Research has shown that women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color are disproportionately penalized for discussing their experiences of discrimination, while hate speech often goes unmoderated. The systems aren’t neutral: they encode particular perspectives on what counts as harmful, often perspectives that protect the powerful rather than the vulnerable.

Or we consider algorithmic hiring systems that screen resumes of applicants. Studies have found that these systems often discriminate against women and marginalzed groups, not because the algorithms are explicitly programmed to discriminate, but because they’re trained on historical data that reflects historical social biases. The technology appears objective, but it actually launders the existing bias through the appearance of neutrality.

Feminist HCI asks us to look beyond immediate functionality to examine these broader consequences.

Bardzell’s Quality Framework

Shaowen Bardzell proposed six qualities that can guide feminist HCI work. These aren’t a checklist, but rather sensibilities to cultivate:

Pluralism: Recognizing and making space for multiple perspectives rather than assuming a single „right“ way.

Participation: Involving stakeholders meaningfully in design processes, particularly those who have been marginalized.

Advocacy: Explicitly positioning design work in relation to social justice goals.

Ecology: Understanding technology not as isolated objects but as embedded in complex social, political, and environmental systems.

Embodiment: Accounting for the reality of having and being a body, and the diversity of bodily experiences.

Self-disclosure: Designers being transparent about their own positions, assumptions, and limitations.

These qualities overlap and reinforce each other. They offer a way to evaluate not just final products, but design processes themselves.

In Practice: What Does This Look Like?

Let’s look at some concrete examples of what feminist HCI principles might mean in practice.

Rethinking health tracking: Rather than apps that assume all users want to track fertility and optimize for conception, design systems that allow users to track what matters to them – whether that’s managing chronic conditions, understanding hormonal patterns, or monitoring symptoms- without assumptions about their reproductive goals or gender identity.

Algorithmic transparency: Instead of black-box algorithms that make decisions about people’s lives, create systems where users can understand why they’re seeing certain content, being offered certain prices, or being included or excluded from opportunities. Give people meaningful agency, not just the illusion of personalization.

Consent architectures: Design systems where sharing data is an active choice, where users understand what they’re sharing and can easily revoke access, and where the default is privacy rather than publicity. Make saying „no“ as easy as saying „yes.“

Inclusive voice interfaces: Moving beyond gendered voice assistants to consider what it means to give AI a personality at all. If we do, ensuring that these personalities don’t replicate stereotypes: the female assistant, the authoritative male expert.

Power-conscious platforms: Social platforms designed not to maximize engagement at all costs, but to support genuine community building while giving members tools to set boundaries, moderate spaces, and resist harassment.

Why This Matters for Everyone

You might be thinking: this all sounds important, but isn’t it a niche concern? Shouldn’t we focus on making technology that works for the majority?

The answer is that feminist HCI makes technology better for everyone.

When we design for disability, we create features that help all users – curb cuts, originally for wheelchairs, help people with strollers, luggage, bicycles. When we question gender binaries, we create more flexible systems that don’t force anyone into narrow boxes. When we examine algorithmic bias, we build more accurate and fair systems. When we center care and consent, we create more ethical technology that respects all users.

Moreover, the „majority“ is a fiction. There is no universal user. We all have specific bodies, contexts, and experiences. We all benefit when technology is designed with that specificity in mind rather than assuming false universals that actually reflect a narrow (and often privileged) perspective.

Feminist HCI isn’t about creating a separate stream of technology for women or any other group. It’s about examining how power operates in the design and deployment of all technology, and using those insights to create more equitable, more thoughtful, more just systems.

How Is This Different from Inclusive Design?

A common question: isn’t this just inclusive design by another name?

There’s overlap, but a crucial difference. Inclusive design asks: „How do we include more people?“ It expands who can use a system, considers diverse abilities and contexts, removes barriers. This is valuable work.

Feminist HCI asks: „Why were people excluded in the first place? What power structures created that exclusion?„ It examines not just outcomes but the systems that produce them.

Consider a registration form. Inclusive design adds „non-binary“ as a third gender option: problem solved, more people can identify themselves. Feminist HCI asks deeper questions: Why are we collecting gender data at all? Who benefits? How will this data be used? What categories are we reinforcing? Is this field actually necessary, or is it invasive?

Or voice assistants. Inclusive design offers multiple voice options like male, female, neutral -giving users choice. Feminist HCI asks: Why are digital assistants coded as female by default? What gender norms does this reproduce? Who made this design decision? How does the system respond to harassment, and what does that teach users about gendered service work?

Inclusive design is often tactical: making this specific product accessible to more people. Feminist HCI is strategic and critical: should we build this product this way at all? What power relations does it reinforce or challenge?

Feminist HCI includes the goals of inclusive design but goes further, examining the structures, incentives, and power dynamics that shape what gets built and how. It’s not just about expanding access – it’s about transforming the systems that determine who has access in the first place.

A Way of Asking Questions

Ultimately, feminist HCI is a way of asking questions. It’s a practice of inquiry, a sensitivity to cultivate, an ongoing engagement rather than a destination.

It asks us to notice what we usually take for granted. To question what seems natural or inevitable. To ask who benefits and who is harmed. To imagine different possibilities.

When we talk about feminist HCI, the conversation is about technology that doesn’t just work but that serves justice, honors embodiment, respects autonomy, and redistributes power more equitably.

It’s about interaction design as a site of politics and possibility.

It’s about building the digital world we actually want to live in.

This article draws on the work of many scholars and practitioners in feminist HCI, particularly Shaowen Bardzell’s foundational 2010 paper „Feminist HCI: Taking Stock and Outlining an Agenda for Design“ (CHI 2010). For readers interested in exploring further, I recommend also engaging with work on Design Justice (Sasha Costanza-Chock) and the book „Ghost Work“ by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri.

Photo: Luke Jones | Unsplash