We want to put our members in the spotlight! For the Meet the WISE series, we interview WISE members in different stages of their career across the university. We hope that their stories, experiences and career paths can be an inspiration to other women at 果冻传媒.
Hello! Could you please start with introducing yourself and the research that you are doing at 果冻传媒?
My name is Daisy O鈥橬eill. I'm doing my PhD at the Department of Industrial Design in collaboration with Philips Experience Design. My research focuses on how we can improve women's experiences in lifestyle change care pathways - for example, like cardiac rehabilitation or prehabilitation. I'm particularly interested in how we can use feminist design practices to really centre women's experiences, and reimagine what care could look like in the future.
How would feminist design in healthcare look like and how do you think it can be implemented in the healthcare system to help women?
Of course, there is no one way to do feminist design. But for me it means centring feminist principles in the way that we design healthcare in the future, so values like plurality, joy, equity, liberation and justice. I think there's three ways that we can include feminist practices: the first is that you, as a designer or as a researcher, start to embody feminist values and work in a feminist way. For example, in the way we collaborate with our colleagues at work. The second is that you can bring feminism to the foreground of your research. Are we inviting participation? Are we centring marginalized voices? Are we adequately reimbursing people for their time? Are we legitimizing knowledge that's produced also outside of the academia for example? And then finally, the third way is of course, you can have a feminist perspective in the outcome or the final design.
At this point in my research, I have just finished re-imagining what future lifestyle change care could look like together with feminist designers, activists and scholars.
Now I鈥檓 trying to translate that into future practice and it is quite hard. I'm working in nutrition specifically at the moment, so we are reimagining like: what if food was not medicalized? What if we didn't think that fatness is the worst thing in the world? What if instead of having this very restrictive mindset around food, we thought that food is a joy that can make you feel really great? What if nutrition care didn鈥檛 have to be restrictive and punitive, and women didn鈥檛 have to be constant projects of self improvement? You're also allowed to just like exist in the world.
You said you are working in a feminist way. Can you give an example of that? How is it different from the common way that we are working now?
I think within academia it can be quite a boy鈥檚 club and it has been like this for a long time. In my view the sociocultural norms of academia have been set by men just because historically there were mostly men in academia for a long time. Enabled by, for example, that they didn鈥檛 traditionally have the caregiving responsibilities as women have. Men have been more financially secure, they were often able to stay at work for many hours, because somebody else is taking care of things at home. So there are these norms towards competition, overwork, wanting to take everything for yourself, and having very individualized pursuits. While working in a feminist way means thinking about how can we meaningfully collaborate where not only one person is getting all the benefits of collaboration. How can we really involve every one so that they mutually benefit from the collaboration? For example, I'm working now with a , and we are publishing a paper that we're all co-first authors on (by using the * next to our names and elaborating on what that means in the text). We decided not to have a hierarchy in our publishing because we've all contributed to this paper.
How is the gender balance now at your department?
Fortunately at industrial design, we are quite gender diverse. I think we have 50% women at the moment. So I very rarely within the department feel like a minority because I'm just not. I have a lot of fantastic women around me at work, which is wonderful.
What do you think is done well at Industrial design department, that can also inspire other departments?
I think Industrial Design is doing a lot of great things. Very rarely I hear overt sexism at industrial design compared to other departments. That being said, I think Industrial Design also benefits from a broader socio-cultural narrative that design is also for women. For example, during high school education there was still much bias against girls doing math, physics, and chemistry, whereas I think it's already embedded that girls do art and design.
What made you interested in doing a PhD at Industrial Design?
I'm a raging feminist in my personal life. In my masters I worked also on feminist perspective on cardiac rehabilitation and the injustice of it all made me super mad.
I've kind of moved on from anger now but honestly, it was fuelled by anger at the beginning. Unfortunately, outside of academia, there's not much space where you're free to explore an alternative direction. I feel lucky that in academia, I don鈥檛 always have capitalism on my shoulder saying: 鈥淏ut how would we make money from that?鈥�
Do you have any advice for those who would like to start a PhD?
I think that is very important to really think carefully if a PhD is the right option for you. It can be very flattering when you're offered a PhD at the end of your master's project, but I think it's super valuable to take some time to really think about whether a PhD is right for you and if it's going to align with your career goals, because a PhD can be incredibly tough.
I would recommend to make sure that your project construction is super clear, and to understand: who are the stakeholders? What are their responsibilities? What are they like? What stake do they have in the project? Because I recently learned that in the Netherlands, a PhD takes on average five years [ref ], but we get funded for four years and it鈥檚 very common practice at the end of your four years to then go on unemployment benefits. That has become the norm. This is an example of exploitation in academia, in my opinion.
That being said, I didn't think about kids or putting down roots at the beginning of my PhD. But now that I'm at the end of my PhD, I'm thinking about these things. I think it's good to consider whether you want to live a transient life. Do you want to move abroad again at the end of your PhD for a postdoc, and then potentially again for another temporary contract? There are places where you don't have to do that, but there is a possibility that you do, and currently it's still the expectation. I also heard that in The Netherlands women in academia are struggling with infertility much more often, because our career timelines delay our attempts to get pregnant. As much as we would want to, your body doesn't always wait for your career. I think you shouldn't put your life on hold for your PhD or your academic career. We try not to talk about it that much... I think because it sounds like then we're not cut out for this job. But I think it's a totally valid consideration, and we should be talking about it more openly.
You have a website where you raise awareness about menopause and you organize workshops as well. Can you tell us about it?
We just did a project asking moms and daughters to come together to discuss menopause. We asked the moms: what would they like to share about their transition in menopause? And we asked the daughters: what would they like to learn? We wanted to really get into the nitty-gritty of what (peri)menopause actually feels like, and what can you actually expect?
It's not always very pretty, necessarily. We discussed the entire spectrum of things that can happen during menopause, including the effect on mental health as well as on social lives and relationships. I think I probably spoke to 500 women about menopause during the Dutch Design Week [ref , ] and many said that work was the last place to talk about menopause. They didn鈥檛 want to seem incompetent for the position that they had worked very hard for. But there are many problems. For example, in Atlas you have no control over the windows and you don't have autonomy of your workspace. This is one example that came up quite often. Also many depression and burnout cases are actually related to menopause. It should be noted that your menopausal period is often the peak of your career in academia. So I think it should be much more of a topic at the university, maybe a nice one for WISE to pick up. We actually have an were we share some information.
You are a former board member of WISE. How was your experience? How did you join and what did you like about it?
Well, I joined because Lenneke Kuijer, an ex-board member, was stepping down.
I went also to an annual event and I thought: 鈥渢his really aligns with what I would like to see changed!鈥�. I think there are two parts of WISE. The social side where it's very important for women to find each other in the university, especially in departments where there are not many women. But then there's also that layer that people don't see as often, which is the advocacy work and the consultation on policy. For example somebody should be monitoring the State of the Union for women at the university, and I think that WISE has that role in some capacity.
What do you think can be improved about WISE?
I would love to see that we embed more feminist perspective in WISE activities. I think it's so complementary to WISE. Because it's possible, of course, to be a group of women and not a group of feminists. I think it would be super nice to have a bit more feminist energy brought to some events.