| Sumario: | This article suggests that it is interior design's strategies for legitimacy that have contributed to the marginalization of the profession, and prevent it from understanding and establishing a distinct, nonsupplemental identity. In efforts made to define, establish, and recognize the field of interior design, little mention has been made of the issue of gender. Whereas other fields such as home economics and nursing have dealt head on with the inherent gender biases of their professions, interior design has not. The gender implications attached to interior design, which in turn are largely responsible for its inherent assignations of inferiority, have been purposely overlooked. By ignoring this important aspect of its perceived identity, interior design has not been able to acquire the proper self-consciousness needed to solve its identity problem. As its recent history demonstrates, efforts to control its own identification by creating definitions, bodies of knowledge, and professional rules and organizations do little to counteract interior design's perceived inferiority to architecture. This will not take place until the issues of gender and marginality are recognized, considered, and deconstructed. The link between interior design and the feminine has to be acknowledged.
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