WHY DO WE NOT SEE MORE FEMALE ARCHITECTS?

 

Why do we not see more female architects?

 

Nearly half of architecture students are women. Why are so few sticking with the industry after graduation?

  

I like to discuss how being a woman and being an architect are—at times—set up as diametrically opposed. How does how we perceive women (or how women are told to act) impact their potential careers as architects? How do existing patriarchal structures undermine women interested in engineering or more math-driven work? How can we work within a community and without a community to begin implementing solutions?

 

I was struck in particular by how many men versus women reported feeling strongly that their work made a difference; this perhaps connected to the finding that female architects felt recognized for working hard rather than for the work itself.

Female and minority architects and designers earn lower salaries than their white male peers and are less likely to hold positions of leadership; mothers in particular lose out on career and salary advancements; and firms have been slow to follow best practices regarding equity and worker well-being.

"We are not victims, we are targets," said Caroline James, a graduate of Harvard’s architecture program and founder of the advocacy group Design for Equality. “Let’s give women tools they can use. Mentorship. Access to information. The sharing of salary info. It’s time to ID the problem and what we need to do moving forward.”

Not surprisingly, then, the percentage of women in architecture radically decreases as one moves up the ladder toward more senior positions and prestigious honors. Female mentors and role models are in scarce supply. (Apart from Zaha Hadid, how many female architects can you name?) And though women might be growing in numbers in the lecture hall, they’re underrepresented on course syllabuses, which can send a message that women aren’t valued participants.

It would seem obvious: If you want more female architects, teach more women to be architects. Other fields where women are underrepresented speak of a pipeline problem, the belief that a lack of diversity stems from a scarcity of available talent. But nearly half of architecture students are women, so why are so few sticking with the industry after graduation?

Even in 2018, assumptions that women would quit to marry, that they would be unable to command authority on job sites, or even that their creativity was not up to par, have persisted, resulting in unequal pay, recognition and access to opportunities. Every woman I spoke to on this topic has a story (or more likely, many stories) of men questioning their competency and qualifications, of not believing they were actually in charge of a project.

Several women said clients often assume that a female architect in a room is there to take notes or serve coffee. One woman was asked in a meeting if she had PMS; another recounted the time when a group of male colleagues complained to the head of the firm that they could not take orders from a woman; still another describes losing a promotion after becoming pregnant.

“It is meaningful both symbolically and substantially that I’m a woman dean at Yale,” said Deborah Berke, dean of architecture at Yale and principal of her own firm. “We won’t see the culture change immediately. But we will see the results.”

In architecture, peer review dominates. When tenure decisions are made by committees made up of men, consist of interviews with mostly male candidates, and are sent to male provosts for approval, the system perpetuates itself. Female architects make less than their male counterparts at every level of experience.

To put it plainly, men are still the face of the profession.

“Every single woman architect I know would, I think, say the same thing,” Ms. Berke said. “‘I want to be a good architect who has a meaningful impact. I don’t want to be known for being a good woman architect.’ Architecture needs to look like the world it serves — and that’s everybody.”

The architects most of us hear about — Gehry, Foster, Ingels — are often commissioned to design skyscrapers, museums and high-tech corporate campuses, and it is those buildings that are seen as the pinnacle of success, the projects to which others should aspire. There are women who want to design skyscrapers, too, but this represents an awfully limited view of what architecture could be. Part of what might account for the low numbers of female graduates continuing in their field may be their interest in forging a different path.

Key to greater equality of opportunity is rethinking what success means in architecture. There is so much available to be reinvented. Housing, low-income housing, gardens, questions of public space, architectural criticism. You can change culture, knowledge and history by designing an app, engaging in social activism or mapping family-friendly spaces. The definition of success is up for grabs.”

As she explained to me in an email: “In many ways, architecture is a profession that has been the epitome of the dominant white patriarchy, from most of the celebrated starchitects to the all too frequent obsession with buildings that are better known for the beauty of the object than the quality of life that they enable.

The problem discussed here is more a societal problem than an architectural one. Transformation won’t come overnight, but there’s one thing all firms could do right now: pay men and women the same.

That’s what the architect and MacArthur fellow Jeanne Gang did for her own firm, Studio Gang, which designs the sort of high-profile projects not typically given to firms led by women. We can start by looking to the fundamental issue of respect in the workplace — pay. Unlike other measures of value, pay is a number. It’s tangible and objective.

It’s an essential first step toward equality that will let the profession move forward, together, to address the more complex challenges that await.