[ArchVoices] Women in Architecture
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In 1995, Progressive Architecture magazine published an article on women in the profession titled, "Women in Architecture: Leveling the Playing Field." Today's issue of ArchVoices is a reprint of that article, providing an opportunity to reflect on what has changed in the ten years since this text was first published.
Regarding change and demographics, the experience of us here at ArchVoices has been that many people look at the statistics and think that diversity is a problem that will eventually solve itself. There are more women in school, and so given time there will be more women licensed. All it takes is time, and so there's really not much we need to do but wait.
This logic is in many ways quite reasonable, but it is also quite irresponsible. First, it assumes that the problem has been entirely independent of the licensure process we rely on to define the profession. Second, the logic is so attractive that people don't demand any evidence or quantification. As a result, we have no idea of the actual percentages of women graduating with professional degrees, moving through the IDP process, passing the ARE, and getting licensed. But just because women are graduating from architecture schools in larger numbers does not mean they are getting licensed in numbers commensurate with those rates. In other words, if 30% of 1995 professional degree graduates were women, we have no idea ten years later if 30% of newly-licensed architects are women. No one can yet answer that basic question.
One item identified in this article, which ten years later is about to change, is that the AIA had not done an overall assessment of the status of women in the profession. The American Bar Association does a comprehensive report of the status of women lawyers annually, the American Medical Association does a comprehensive report on the status of women physicians annually, and the National Sciences Foundation conducts a comprehensive report on the status of women in science and engineering every other year. During the 2004 AIA Convention, delegates overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for a substantial data collection effort to help us better track progress related to diversity in the profession. This effort is currently underway, with a preliminary report due at this year's AIA Convention in May.
AIA delegates should be commended for calling for this report, and once produced, it should be updated and analyzed continuously. In the meantime, all more and better statistics will do is to inform the discussion, help us to set specific goals and to measure our collective progress towards those goals. We will still need to encourage an open discussion about gender issues and identify corresponding goals. Whatever happens nationally, however, we encourage you to take the initiative of facilitating an open discussion within your firm, school, or other local group.
Statistics on Women in Major Professions:
In an attempt to help orient architecture among the major professions that we tend to compare ourselves to, we have compiled the following statistics, just fyi:
Medicine (AMA, 2003) physicians: 26% tenured faculty: 13% residents: 51% students: 48%
Law (ABA, 2003) attorneys: 29% tenured faculty: 25% associates: 42% students: 49%
Engineering (NSF, 2000) Professional Engineers: 9% tenured faculty: not available students: 20%
Architecture (NAAB, 2003; AIA, 2000) Registered Architects: 13% tenured faculty: 17% interns: not available students: 40%
Women in Architecture: Leveling the Playing Field By Abby Bussel
When the April 1994 issue of Blueprint arrived, I saw the status of women architects illustrated in four-color: The cover story was about emerging talent in London, but the cover line, "All the Young Dudes," was laid over a photograph of 23 men--not a woman in sight. I was appalled by the message the magazine sent, a message its editors noted--subsequently and apologetically--was inadvertent. The women they had found, explained the editors in a published response to a slew of irate letters (including my own), did not meet the criteria set for the article.
If Blueprint's search for young talent didn't turn up any suitable women, was it a lack of effort or a dismal account of the status quo? Either way, the subject of gender must still be addressed by the press (Blueprint is not the only laggard; P/A and the others could be more proactive on this count) and by the profession. This despite what some believe is a satisfactory fait accompli: women are already here.
But having a presence is not enough. It's like making the team, but spending the whole season on the bench. Bridging the gender gap in architecture is not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do if the profession is to survive in our increasingly diverse society. "If we don't," contends Linda Groat, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan, "we will remain isolated and esoteric." Giving everyone equal time on a level playing field is a way for this profession to avoid marginalization.
The Status Quo
This is not to say that women aren't making headway in the profession. Their numbers are rising steadily in the architecture schools (currently one-third of the total number of undergraduates and graduate students) [note: remember, this is a 1995 article]. And women-owned firms are more common than they were 20 years ago. But women make up only 9.1 percent of the AIA's regular membership and the day-to-day experience in education and practice is still strewn with the same old obstacles.
"We're seen as women first, architects second," says a sole practitioner in California. A common misconception in the profession is that women want special treatment. But "what we want is equal treatment" says a firm partner in San Francisco, offering this example of the problem: when she is approached by a potential client, it's often for an interiors job, but when her male partner is approached, the client wants a building.
The scarcity of women practitioners feeds the public's assumption that all architects are men, and makes life tougher for those women who are in the field. The dearth of women colleagues and mentors, for example, is expressed by a project architect reflecting on her experience in a now-defunct branch of a well-known firm: "At age 30, I should not [have been] the woman in the office with the most architecture experience." Unfair promotion practices as well as pay inequity are common frustrations. Says one 38-year-old sole practitioner, "I was the most senior woman in an office of 120 people, with only ten years of experience. Two months after I began, they hired a guy with about eight years of experience, told me he was my equal in terms of position, and paid him $12,000 a year more than me."
Opportunities to gain experience also come less frequently to women. A 37-year-old architect, now an owner/principal, wrote to us about "...being given only drafting duties well after professional registration, while project architect duties and responsibilities were given to unregistered male employees with far less experience." The same respondent also decried illegal hiring practices, such as being asked "questions during interviews regarding whether I had children, was going to have children, etc."
Discriminatory and sexist behavior also plagues women outside the office, where they confront societal preconceptions of ability and position. On arrival at a client's office for a design development meeting, a 27-year-old licensed architect was asked: "Are you the interior decorator?" While running a construction meeting, the same person received this comment: "Well, maybe you can just have the architect give me a call, honey."
But the greatest evil is sexual harassment: "I was sexually harassed by a prominent architect and the situation was allowed to happen by his staff," says a junior designer. A similar situation was relayed to us by a firm principal in reference to a previous job: "During a conference, I was propositioned by another manager to meet him in a hotel room to have sex. Our boss was there listening to this come-on and said nothing. Luckily, I felt confident enough to tell him off. He was not disciplined."
Collecting Data
Evidence of inequities in the profession has been collected in a major research project conducted by Dr. Kathryn Anthony, chair of the Building Research Council at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with several assistants, and funded by the Graham Foundation and the UIUC Campus Research Board. An outgrowth of earlier research for Anthony's seminal book, Design Juries on Trial, this study used both surveys and interviews to collect data from three sample groups that included white and minority women and men. Although the researchers are currently in the process of combining all three data sets into a total sample of more than 400, the results of one group (drawn from a random sample list of AIA members) show that "more than one-half of the participants had seen or heard about gender discrimination and about one-third had personally experienced it." And on a 5-point scale, opportunities for advancement received a 3.2 from men and a 2.5 from women.
Said one participant in this study, addressing the double standard of performance requirements in the profession: "Women have got to be better than men to succeed." Participants also addressed the pros and cons of being assertive. One woman architect, who was at first assigned only menial tasks, later asked for more challenging work and got it. But the experience of another woman architect was quite different: "Every day you've got to go out and prove [yourself]--win their respect. They [employers and colleagues] either respect you or call you a bitch."
Based on her findings, Anthony offers these suggestions to anyone experiencing injustice in the workplace: set your own goals, ask for challenging assignments, get a broad range of experience, document your activities, update your resume regularly, and seek help from diversity networks. And her advice for firms seeking to improve working conditions and their own competitiveness: institute diversity standards, educate management, encourage extra-professional activities, allow flex-time for community and family involvement, and learn from companies outside the profession that promote inclusionary practices. Anthony also believes the AIA should create and promote diversity programs for firms (tailored to firm size), develop a system to make firms accountable for achieving diversity goals, and establish awards to recognize firms that have exemplary programs.
Going to the Authorities
Although an award would put a positive spin on the issue of diversity, it obviously wouldn't eliminate discriminatory practices or sexual harassment. But the AIA's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct can be used as a vehicle for assuaging gender-related problems, an avenue of which seemingly few are aware. Rule of Conduct 2.501 states: "Members shall not discriminate in their professional activities on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, or sexual orientation." The code is administered by a National Judicial Council appointed by the Institute's board of directors; charges can be filed by members, components, or anyone directly aggrieved by the conduct of members. Offenders in the most extreme cases may have their membership terminated; and public acknowledgement of code infringements depends on the type of reprimand made by the council.
Another strategy, taken by a brave few, is to report incidences of discrimination and sexual harassment to superiors or to take documentation to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. Most of the respondents to our questionnaire who came up against illegal practices said they did nothing because they feared retribution or blackballing; many had seen colleagues "laid off" for speaking out. Taking the risk of not getting a job or losing one is just not an option for most people. But both the EEOC and the Labor Department have penalties for retribution, and a few lawsuits would encourage offenders, both men and women, to think twice before making sexual advances or practicing in a discriminatory manner. However, many of the suits that are brought result in settlements with a gag order attached. So much for public scrutiny.
Towards a Level Playing Field
That such problems persist is abominable, but women are finding ways to overcome them. To ensure equal treatment in the workplace, many have started their own firms. Others are reasserting the presence of women in the profession at conferences on gender. At the recent "Inherited Ideologies" conference (P/A. June 1995, p69), for example, presenters dissected and revised architecture's patriarchal history. Beatriz Colomina, an assistant professor of architecture at Princeton University, spoke about Le Corbusier's subjugation of Eileen Gray. And Alice Friedman, professor of art and co-director of the architecture program at Wellesley, spoke of significant contributions women clients have made to the designs of ground-breaking work such as the Schroeder House and the Barnsdall House.
Another way to insert the accomplishments of women into the architecture annals is being undertaken by Sheila M. Klos, head of the Architecture & Allied Arts Library at the University of Oregon. In response to unfulfillable requests from students to locate information on women, Klos is compiling the Index to American Women Architects, 1945-1995.
At the grass roots, local women-in-architecture groups, some open to men and women, have been in existence around the country for many years and range from highly organized associations--such as the Women in Architecture of the Northern Virginia AIA Chapter and the Association for Women in Architecture in Los Angeles--to more loosely knit groups. (Some, like the one I am involved with, include professionals from a variety of disciplines.)
There have also been activist groups such as the now defunct CARY (Chicks in Architecture Refuse to Yield) founded in Chicago by architects Carol Crandall, Kay Janis, and Sally Levine in 1992, one year before the AIA National Convention was held in their city. Taking the opportunity to reach the Institute's rank-and-file, CARY launched the exhibition, "More Than the Sum of Our Body Parts," a series of in-your-face vignettes, during the convention.
One vignette, "There Were Three Professionals in a Boat...," compared architecture to two other historically male-dominated professions: medicine, which is 18.1 percent female (1992), and law, which is 24.4 percent female (1990). It also compared the efforts of each to confront gender bias and create policies to improve working conditions for women. The American Bar Association, for example, has recognized the importance of self-assessment. Its Commission on Women in the Profession, in a 1988 report to the ABA House of Representatives, argued that the barriers to women in law were affecting the viability of the profession: "We must examine the structures of our professional institutions to ensure they do not become anachronisms--and that we do not lose the talents of our best and brightest."
The AIA, on the other hand, has not investigated the high attrition rate of women. Its Women in Architecture Committee, which has been incorporated into its National Diversity Committee, did not undertake a thorough assessment of the status of its constituency. However, a two-part study on the subject for the AIA by Roberta Feldman, Co-Director of the City Design Center at the University of Illinois-Chicago, has been partially funded. If and when it is completed, we may gain a better grasp on the reasons we are losing many of our own best and brightest.
In contrast to CARY's guerrilla-like tactics, which were reactivated by Levine in a new show that coincided with the AIA's second annual National Diversity Conference in San Francisco this August (P/A. Oct. 1995, p23), those who attended the women's caucus at the conference tried to work from inside the establishment. At the end of two heady sessions, the caucus submitted a proposal for an AIA Draft Policy Statement on Women's Issues in the Architectural Profession that outlined actions it hoped the Institute would take, including: recognition of different models of leadership; promotion of fair employment practices in firms (family leave policies and flex-time schedules, open statements of promotion standards, pay equity, mentorship and role models); and promotion of gender equity in the schools.
Caucus participants also suggested that diversity sessions be held at the annual convention and urged the Institute to publish and promote a "Model Employment Manual." (The ABA published its own manual, "Lawyers and Balanced Lives: A guide to drafting and implementing workplace policies for lawyers," in 1990.)
One caucus attendee, Sylvia Kwan, a former chair of the AIA's Minority Resources Committee who is currently running for election to the national board of directors, disagrees with the need for a manual, believing that firms should make necessary structural changes based on ideas exchanged in an open dialogue with employees. Acting in response to a morale problem, which had resulted in the loss of several talented junior architects, she and her partner Denis Henmi at Kwan/Henmi established their own level playing field several months ago. In their case, the problem to be addressed was not specifically gender-related, but a junior-senior problem. She was approached by junior staffers who "were relegated to tasks rather than to projects" or pigeonholed in certain project types. The partners held a forum, asking their employees what they could do to improve working conditions. The firm's 30-person staff, which is divided equally between men and women, requested that they be allowed to work on project types of their choice and to stay on projects through completion. They also asked for improvements in communication within the project team. And the requests were granted. The benefits to the firm, believes Kwan, are higher morale, lower turnover, greater depth in the staff, and the ability to present a comprehensive marketing plan to potential clients.
Sam White of Buttrick White & Burtis, New York, also sees value in mutually agreed-upon working conditions. His firm has a conventional maternity leave policy, but when women come back to work, arrangements can be made for flexible schedules. "We have one woman architect who works 15 hours a week. But those hours are a gift [to the firm]" he says. Another architect who came back from maternity leave now works 40 hours in four days.
Taking It From the Top
While there are instances of inclusionary practices in the profession, many people believe that a generation or two must die out before a real paradigm shift can occur. But a more proactive approach is urgently needed: diversity studies should be a continuing education requirement for practitioners; and architecture schools should diversify their curricula and try harder to hire women and minorities. It is in the schools, where age-old exclusionary practices are instilled and perpetuated, that evolutionary changes can have the most long-lasting effect.
The need for changes in the schools is addressed in a forthcoming article in the Journal of Architectural Education (February 1996) by Linda Groat and Sherry Ahrentzen, a professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In it, they argue that demographic diversity and intellectual diversity "are two sides of the same coin.... Increasing the number of women and minorities in the field should mean increasing the substantive domain of the profession, and vice-versa." The article is based on the authors' survey of 642 students in six schools conducted to analyze how architectural education might impede or support women and minorities.
Like women practitioners, women students often feel isolated, assume they have to exceed a higher threshold than men, and believe men can "look the part," regardless of ability. A related problem is the jury system, where a more explicit grading system would decrease inequitable practices. The authors also found that the design studio may be uncomfortable for women because its structure "privileges persuasion over dialogue."
"The visions and ideals of many women and minorities," Groat told me, "don't seem to jibe with the mainstream model." Social issues, for example, were not addressed to the degree these students had envisioned. The narrow focus on formal issues in conventional curricula can be related to the generally monolithic nature of school faculty.
Another educator pursuing equal rights for women, Michael Kaplan of the University of Tennessee School of Architecture, argued at the AIA's first diversity conference that "the failure of architectural academia to accelerate the inclusion of women and minorities in its tenured ranks has been a barrier to building new leadership in the profession by denying role models to female and minority students." According to Kaplan, women make up 8.7 percent of the total number of tenured faculty in accredited architecture programs.
The low number of women educators, particularly among tenured faculty, was addressed in a second study by Groat and Ahrentzen. Women are among the leaders in rethinking architectural education (both Sharon Sutton of the University of Michigan and Leslie Kanes Weisman of NJIT, for example, have reactivated community service studios, a concept that was promoted in the 1970s and marginalized in the 1980s). But the efforts of more junior faculty are stymied, the researchers speculate, by their predominantly non-administrative positions, by their lack of visibility in advanced studio, and by schools' failure to make explicit the requirements for tenure, much the way firms fail to specify criteria for promotion.
Statistically, architectural education is "at the bottom of the barrel, just above engineering and dentistry" in gender diversity, says Ahrentzen, who notes that the NAAB is rewriting its accreditation guidelines next year--an opportunity to make a few changes in criteria.
NAAB requirements for gender diversity and racial equity would be a major boon. But not the only hope. Says Ahrentzen, "the belief in the schools is that redirection may be coming from the students." With or without NAAB requirements, the schools should establish more inclusionary practices. They would then be more competitive, and their graduates would be more attuned to the world around them.
What's Sex Got to Do With It?
The barriers women in architecture face are not their problem only, but ours. Adapting to current economic realities requires an interdisciplinary, team-oriented workplace, with employees who are skilled in many areas. Leveling the playing field for women and minorities would bring a wide range of perspectives and experiences to the profession. It simply cannot thrive without them. The impending threat to dismantle affirmative action legislation would further tear our already delicate social fabric and hamper the profession's efforts towards diversity. What's needed now is a new definition of architect and in this women can lead the way.
As always, we welcome your thoughts by email at
editors@archvoices.org.
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