From Metaphor to Discipline: the Gender Code of the Donna Chair

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_46How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Donna Chair; Metaphor; Discipline; Gender Code

Abstract

Using Gaetano Pesce’s Donna chair as the research object, this paper employs visual semiotics and critical design analysis to examine how the chair’s symbolic system and physical form metaphorically represent women’s reproductive and social roles, exposing the design’s hidden gender power. According to the study, the Donna chair reproduces the framework of inequality and solidifies gender and power inequality by mimicking the shape of the female body and womb and internalizing social discipline into the unconscious practices of the individual. The analysis of the chair demonstrates how design contributes to the reproduction of gender ideology and broadens the use of Foucault’s idea of discipline in design research, which is why the study is significant.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lili Yan
AU  - Jinmin Zhao
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/22
TI  - From Metaphor to Discipline: the Gender Code of the Donna Chair
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 4th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 394
EP  - 403
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_46
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_46
ID  - Yan2025
ER  -