If there is one thing we had during lockdown it was time.
Time to think, feed our passions, and, in some cases, even give birth to new projects.
Portland-based designer Olivia Johnson has managed to combine all three with Women’s Work, a cross-stitch project that explores and illustrates the condition of women in the workplace.

With needle and thread, and the colors of red and blue, she has reproduced various statistics covering issues ranging from sexual harassment to the lack of women in management positions, from the pay gap to how parenting affects mothers’ earnings.

Cross stitch, a form of art that tends to be labeled as kitsch and women’s hobby craft, was utilised to emphasise the fact that women’s labour is routinely dismissed and undervalued.

A series of pie charts shows that 41 percent of women working in the United States have suffered sexual harassment at work (based on a 2019 report entitled Women in the Workplace), that black and Latin women are less likely to get promoted, and that all women are much more likely to sacrifice their careers for their families than men.

We recommend that you take a look at the whole project, and all the research related to it, on the site that the designer has dedicated to her work, aesthetically beautiful and socially necessary.