A few color options for representing gender
A few days ago, I needed to represent gender data by coloring dots on a map, so I dug up this trusty resource from Datawrapper’s Lisa Charlotte Rost. She wrote it back in 2018, and I’ve referenced it many times since to check out all the options that she gathered.
Why do we need options? What happened to pink and blue? Well, undoubtedly there are gender stereotypes associated with pink and blue. So why not change it up a bit? I certainly don’t want to confuse people by just swapping blue for pink and vice versa, but Lisa collected many great examples, so there’s no excuse NOT to try some out.
I’d also recommend running whatever colors you choose through Susie Lu and Elijah Meeks’ Viz Palette tool to check for how the colors play together encoded in different ways, plus check for colorblindness and how it looks in greyscale.
Here are a few of my favorite combinations with my pros and cons.
Yellow and Purple
Pro: Nice contrast and doesn’t seem to dunk on convention so much as to be confusing. Looks good for color blind and in greyscale.
Con: For those that are colorblind, the purple reads more blue so it could be confusing as first glance.
Green and Dark Purple
Pro: It’s beautiful and has cool meaning behind it (from Lisa’s article: The colors are inspired by the “Votes for Women” campaign in the UK as part of the initial suffrage movement in the early 20th century.), and is still a nod to the blue and pink so it’ll be somewhat intuitive.
Con: For those that are colorblind, the purple reads more blue so it could be confusing at first glance.
Teal and Orange
Pro: Kind of a nod to blue and pink but not too on the nose so it’ll be more intuitive for the reader.
Con: Not much distinction when viewed in greyscale, which is important if this might get printed in black and white.
Do you have any go-to color scheme for gender data?
