Women in Architecture

Research about women in architecture

We're only offering our own observations, of course.

For more information you should start with Why do women leave architecture by Anne de Graft-Johnson et al (2004) of the University of the West of England. To its great credit, this report was funded by the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Then take a look at the writings of Prof Sherry Ahrentzen, probably the world's leading theorist on the subject of women in architecture and in architecture school. You should also certainly check out Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architecture Profession (University of Illinois Press, 2001) by Prof Kathryn Anthony. And we would also direct you to some stuff by Dr Carla Corroto. From the emails we've exchanged, it's clear that she knows more about these issues than we ever will. Take a look at ‘The Architecture of Sexual Harassment’ which appears in In the Company of Men (Northeastern University Press, 2004).

When you've done with all that, read ‘Women Architects and Their Discontents’ by Bridget Fowler and Fiona Wilson Sociology 38(1): 101-119).

Women in architectural education

An architectural education is, in its own whacky way, much more enriching than the usual university sit-in-a-lecture-hall-all-day sort of thing; the gender split is tolerable (but not perfect); and everyone gets to meet lots of nice upper-middle class people and have a lot of fun (which, as the MIT Professor of Economics Paul Krugman notes in one of his books, is the whole point of universities). But it can also be terrifying, especially for the less-gifted. And, once out of school, many female graduates either never enter practice or leave a few years after graduation, as we discuss below.

Easy targets for harassment

There is a moderate amount of sexual harassment in all architecture schools, Australian and otherwise. Whether this is more or less than in any other discipline in the universities, we do not know. However, the unusually intimate nature of architectural education gives any form of harassment a decided edge.

Of course, there are special counsellors employed by the universities for people thus threatened. But don't think they are there to help the complainant. They are there to protect the university— who pays them, after all? We can think of several examples from our days as an academic at the University of Sydney where the complainant was not only discouraged from contacting the police over an alleged rape attempt; but pressured by very senior figures in the University administration to quietly drop the matter entirely.

Special Note: For a contrary opinion, you should read this former female architecture student's belief that there is no such thing as sexual harassment at a university.

The fabled glass ceiling

Female architecture graduates: lots of them!

The graph below shows the proportion of female graduates from US architecture schools, using the most recent data we have. Quite a solid steady climb in the proportion of women from 1950 to the early 1980s, but then we see the ratio gently bump into the fabled glass-ceiling at around 42%. A rising line from the early 1990s may or may not be sustained.

Over the past ten years, the big expansion in architecture students in our own Australia has come from a female influx. In 1984 only 21% of architecture graduates were female; in 1996 this had grown to 35%, and the proportion is closer to 40% today. The absolute numbers are more telling. About 300 women graduated in 1984, compared to over a thousand in 1996.

In the United Kingdom 38% of graduates are women. That the three countries have settled on near-identical female ratios we find a little unsettling. It would seem to indicate that a common structural condition is operating in all.

Female architects: where are they

A prime mystery is: what happens to these female graduates? After twenty years at a 35–40% female graduation ratio in both the USA and UK, we should expect to see by now the same ratio in practice. Yet the data for both indicates a very significant drop-out rate.

Take a look at this table for the United States, showing female participation in various occupations (2006 data). What do you think?

Category	% women
All workers in the USA	44%
- Management, professional and related	51%
-- Management, business and finance	45%
-- Professional and related	55%
--- Computing	26%
--- Architects	24%
--- Lawyers	37%
--- Civil engineers	10%
--- Physicians and surgeons	34%
--- Artists	43%
--- Designers	49%
--- Writers	60%
- Service	51%
- Sales and office	62%
- Natural resources, construction, maintenance	4%
-- Farming, fishing and forestry	21%
-- Construction workers	2%
- Production and transportation	21%
Percentage of women in various occupational categories in the USA. Source: Current Population Survey, 2006.

Celebrity architects

Others have pointed out that you can count the celebrity women architects of today on one hand: Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima, Gae Aulenti. And: so many others seem to be part of a husband and wife team — Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, Alison and Peter Smithson of yesteryear; and more recently Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio.

So of those women who do stay in, quite a lot are married to other architects. Or they have the funds to support them for decades without a paying job. A goodly portion of the others end up in academia or become critics, maintaining their registration but never practising.