“Designing Women III: Mother” is conceptually inspired by a Harvard study that found that a large portion of the pay gap that exists between men and women can be explained by the “motherhood penalty,” which at its essence is the belief that mothers are less committed to their jobs than their male counterparts, even if the men are also fathers, and therefore are not payed equally. Fathers in fact receive a pay increase with the birth of each child as they are viewed as breadwinners. A followup study looked at how society could best address this inequity and found that the most beneficial way to change the unconscious bias is to challenge the cultural norms that maintain those beliefs through both policy changes in the workplace and exposure to facts/experiences that show the norm to be false.

The Mother show intends to challenge this norm by highlighting the work of female artists/designers that are also mothers, and through their work are making notable contributions to the art and design landscape.

Historical and contemporary works of both fine art and design will be presented. Co-curated with Tealia Ellis Ritter, the exhibition will be on display May 2021 at Egg Collective’s TriBeCa Showroom.