The curious case of missing female architects.
It is an undeniable fact, proven time and again, that we live in a patriarchal society, where women have been struggling for basic rights since time was probably recorded. Perhaps even before then. But today, we believe for the world to be changing (for the better — or so we hope), yet some corners are harder to clean than the rest. At a random attempt at job-hunting recently, I came across this wonderful job advert that had me fuming for a while (a couple of days actually). The requirement was for a “MALE Interior Designer/Architect” for a “Very reputed Company with a 1000 crore turnover” which is about 10 billion Indian rupees. This initiated a chain of thoughts that had me going back to small incidents of gender inequality that happen in the architecture discipline every day and the following written piece is a constructive rant (disclaimer).
While in architecture school, over 75% of my cohort was made up of females, young girls starry-eyed with the ambition of entering the profession, some of them being the first generation in their families to receive formal education on an undergraduate level. This is the case across most architecture schools where women form a larger part of the student proportion. Now, architecture, on average, is a five-year-long academic course, which requires an insane amount of hard work. One goes through over-worked and unpaid internships, several nerve-wracking juries, about more than half a century of models, and several hundreds of all-nighters, after which one manages to finish architecture school.
Cut to life from academia to practice‑ from an overwhelming majoritarian representation, women are suddenly under-represented in architecture as academicians and as practitioners. A study conducted by Dezeen in 2017 looked at the 100 biggest firms from around the globe, and it revealed that only one in 10 senior positions are occupied by women and that 16 percent of firms have no women in their management teams. There are various reasons for this apart from gender disparity leading to harassment and unequal pay. The other being the ungodly number of working hours that one needs to put in to showcase their level of commitment. Now, in a qualitative field like architecture, we measure a qualitative factor-like commitment through a quantitative value of time. Irony much?
For a woman architect, this quantitative aspect needs to be balanced along with the everyday lives where they are also in charge of the domestic sphere (cannot ignore the patriarchal system), this results in either women having a hard time finding employment after marriage or unable to hold positions of leadership.
Friends and colleagues have often been asked about the “future-plans” and whether they intend to settle down anytime soon, which is shorthand for whether they plan to marry and/or start a family anytime soon. Women friends and colleagues of course. The men are never put up on that pedestal. The repercussion is for anyone to guess, the percentage of women in architecture is radically decreasing higher up on the ladder, resulting in a lack of female mentors and role models. How many female architects can you name off your head? How many male architects can you name? How many female ‘starchitects’, as they are famously called, can you think of?
This under-representation in the profession leads to an underrepresentation on course syllabuses as well which leaves one wondering about where did the Women architects go? The answer is, we ended up losing them to allied fields that have better pay and a manageable work-life balance.
A reaction to all of this was the flash mob at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018 that introduced a manifesto titled “Voices of Women”, calling an end to “pervasive prejudices and disrespectful behaviour that appears to be systemic in our culture and discipline.” Such incidents bring to light the issues that otherwise remain unaddressed. Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Karen Burns, an architect and architectural historian from Melbourne who along with Lori Brown is on her way to publishing ‘The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopaedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2015’ in 2021 of which they are the editors. The book is a compilation of pioneer women architects from around the world and their stories over 55 years.
Of course, most of these are issues that are being addressed in the western world whereas we, in India, are still not quite able to catch up. However, people are initiating such conversations through their work. For instance, Ar. Madhavi Desai, who is a founding member of the Women Architects Forum and the author of Women Architects and Modernism in India (Routledge, 2017). Like Burns, she questions the discourse and its intersection with gender roles. They are just a few of the many that are currently addressing the issue of gender inequality within the discourse.
The problem discussed is more societal than just an architectural one and transformation cannot come overnight. However, such events and conversations spark thoughts and actions that ultimately challenge the canon. Our generation of architects is privileged with a voice that gives us a chance to rewrite history and work our way towards inclusion.
For instance, one of the most controversial events in the architectural world was when the honourable Pritzker Prize, which is the highest honour given to an architect, failed to recognise Ar. Denise Scott Brown for her role in the 1991 Pritzker Prize, while it was won by her husband and partner Robert Venturi. The result of such conversations and activism is reflected in rewarding incidents when in 2020, the Pritzker was awarded to Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. In its 43-year history, only two women have previously been awarded this honour, Zaha Hadid in 2004 and Kazuyo Sejima in 2010 (awarded with her partner Ryue Nishizawa). These are the top order changes but sure did cause a stir at the grass-root level as well.
So, to the person/firm who posted the job application that brought this article about as well as others like them, I wish all of them a bright future but one that follows a broader perspective. And to my dear fellow female architects, change is around the corner. Let’s not lose heart just yet. The world is changing ‑ one person at a time, but it is.
