Gender and decoloniality: thinking brazilian design through local women’s knowledge and textile practices

Rethinking design is essential to meet Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 12, as the field is also acknowledged for its important social role. In this article, we reflect on gender and decoloniality in Brazilian design to think about the field through women’s handmade textile production, mostly present in home environments, aiming for commercial, emotional, and family-related purposes. Despite constant engagement, women’s participation in design is rarely recognized, especially when related to textile production typically associated with a “feminine and subjective universe. However, these domestic practices demonstrate creative capacity to meet different needs and materialize solutions outside the formal design network. The concept of decoloniality enables us to discuss the possibility of legitimizing this marginalized knowledge, decentralizing existing theory and practice, opposing objective and neutral hegemonic knowledge, providing opportunities for diversity, and challenging the patriarchal values linked to design. Using a qualitative approach, we discuss selected aspects from the literature and data collected by an exploratory field study in which Brazilian women were interviewed on their practices related to textile production. Thus, we concluded that by considering a feminist-decolonial perspective, it is possible to resignify women and their handmade textile practices and incorporate them into Brazilian design, theory, and practice.