Archinect - News

RIBA will explore gender disparities in architecture in major new study

2024-11-01T17:17:00-04:00

This week, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced its participation with the nonprofit Fawcett Society in a new study of women architects who are either currently practicing or have left the profession. The study, which is due out next year, aims to establish a clearer picture of the scale and complexity of gender equity in the design field. It will inquire as to the reasons for a stalled rate of progress on the topic given the known barriers that exist and produce an assessment of "what works" and what further actions can be taken by different actors.

RIBA's Chief Executive Dr Valerie Vaughan-Dick states: "Following decades of research, the pace of change remains far too slow compared to other professions, and significant action is still needed. Understanding the barriers to making more rapid progress is critical."

The organization is asking those interested in receiving updates from the study to sign up by visiting this link.

“There are almost no women” working in the geoengineering field

2019-12-21T09:00:00-05:00

As scientists continue to advocate for further development of [geoengineering] technologies, the field’s demographics are drawing more scrutiny. Some researchers argue the lack of diversity affects both which geoengineering projects get discussed [...] and how their risks get calculated.

In a recent article, Wired writer Sarah Sax dives into the troubling demographics of the White male-dominated geoengineering field, a largely theoretical research program with the potential for global impacts, both anticipated and unforeseen.

Explaining how the monocultural makeup of the world's geoengineering scientists might impact—and bias—their research, Sax writes, "Because the only way to test these interventions is to deploy them, much of the science of geoengineering remains hypothetical. But even that is problematic."

As Jack Stilgoe, a sociologist at University College London, tells Sax, “We can’t do risk assessments because we have no idea of the technology; It is still in the realm of the imagination. But what is imagined is actually really important. And who does that imagining really impacts the material outcomes.”

L.A.'s 6th Street Bridge: Built by (some) women

2019-12-11T13:36:00-05:00

The 6th Street Bridge team of 170 includes 15 women — the most on any commercial project in Los Angeles and nearly double the Department of Labor’s participation goal of 6.9% female crew members.

The Los Angeles Times reports on the relatively high proportion of women construction workers helping to build the Michael Maltzan Architecture-designed 6th Street Bridge in Los Angeles. The bridge is being constructed via a joint venture between Skanska and Stacy and Witbeck. Skanska recently redesigned some of its construction site protective equipment to make the items safer for women to use

According to Bureau of Labor statistics cited in the article, the construction industry represents a rare bright spot for women with regards to pay equity, where women make 100.8% as much as men do.

Describing the number of women who are working on the project, Rosa Garcia, a carpenter on the project, told The Los Angeles Times, “There’s been jobs where there’s been 800 guys and one female — and I’ve been the only female. This is the first project that I walked on to where I couldn’t believe how many women I saw.”

Should men learn to "lean out"?

2019-10-11T05:00:00-04:00

In the workplace, probably unsurprisingly to many women who are routinely talked over, patronized or ignored by male colleagues, research shows that rather than women being underconfident, men tend to be overconfident in relation to their actual abilities. Women generally aren’t failing to speak up; the problem is that men are refusing to pipe down.

Author Ruth Whippman, writing in The New York Times, questions the focus on coaching women to adopt the aggressive social behaviors of men in the workplace. Might these efforts be more effective if men were simultaneously encouraged to cede space, attention, and power in a reciprocal manner?

"The assumption that assertiveness is a more valuable trait than say, deference is itself the product of a ubiquitous and corrosive gender hierarchy," Whippman writes. This bias, according to Whippman, includes career and educational focuses, including the fact that "tax dollars are poured into encouraging girls to take up STEM subjects, but no one seems to care much whether boys become nurses."

With progress toward pay equity in the architecture field more or less stalled, and executive-level imbalances continuing for the foreseeable future, should more men adopt a "lean out" approach?

RIBA launches gender pay guidance for practices

2019-04-04T17:13:00-04:00

Tuesday marked Equal Pay Day, the point in the year when the average woman's salary catches up to what white men made in 2018. For women of color, for whom the gap is far greater, it won't be until November that each of their earnings match men's salaries from 2018.

These statistics are a stark reminder that the historic pay gap continues to persist. Hoping to change that, last year, the UK government began requiring companies with 250 or more employees to publish an annual gender pay gap report that would include figures such as the median gender pay gap and what proportion of men versus women receive bonus payments.

For architecture firms in the UK, 2019 reporting showed little signs of progress. In fact, a number of the practices required to reveal their figures not only failed to improve gender pay gaps, but saw an increase.

"There is no place for discrimination in our profession. Yet, almost 50 years after equal pay legislation came into force in the UK, significant instances...

Jeanne Gang closed the pay gap at her firm and urges others to do the same

2018-07-05T15:40:00-04:00

Achieving pay equity is a foundational act of building an environment in which creativity can flourish. Taking the first step toward equality via pay empowers us to move forward, together, to address the more complex challenges that await. Comprehensive, math-based tools are available to assess the problem. Let’s put them to work. Follow the money (or lack thereof), and fix pay inequity now.

Jeanne Gang's firm Studio Gang recently scrutinized their office for any existing pay gap. She explains that despite their prioritization of equality there was in fact a small gender pay gap in their office.

Using her own practice as an example, Gang urges every architecture studio to go through the same process. Gang calls for other firms to "use the assessment tools, determine where you are, and make the needed adjustments" citing this step as the the easiest and most concrete way to correct inequality in the workplace.

AA annual report shows upwards of $1M loss last year

2018-04-04T14:08:00-04:00

The Architectural Association made a loss in excess of £800,000 last year, its annual report has revealed. The cash-strapped school – which made nine redundancies this winter – posted net expenditure of £819,732 for the year ending 31 July 2017, according to accounts due to be filed at Companies House. This compared with a net income of £244,551 in the previous year.

The AA's annual report stated the "Expenditure increased in the year due to one-off costs in governance reform as part of preparation for the TDAP application, together with increased costs of compliance monitoring and property rentals at Bedford Square."

The report also states an income issue with student numbers not meeting their target resulting in a tuition fee income of around $22M for last year.

On a positive note the AA's gender pay gap report showed the school's median female staff salary way equal to its median male salary.

Foster + Partners, releasing gender pay gap in staff salaries, commits to taking action

2018-03-07T18:24:00-05:00

Despite their recent work creating carbon-fibre roofs of impressive thinness, the UK-based Foster + Partners appears to be less adept when it comes to those made of glass. Releasing their gender pay gap data, the firm revealed yesterday that they have been, not so shockingly, paying women 10.5% less per hour than men—a figure that sits slightly above the country's national average of 9.1%.

In 2017, in an effort to help close the wage gap, the UK began requiring all companies with 250 or more employees to submit gender pay gap data to the government. As the UK's largest architecture practice with 1,450 employees globally., Foster + Partners was one of the many companies obligated to submit their figures, which they have also made public.

According to the firm's analysis, the pay gap is less the result of men and women not being paid equally for equivalent jobs, and more the result of unequal gender distribution across the firm. Senior, higher-paid roles are comprised of a larger pe...

New website champions the remarkable contributions made by 50 pioneering women in architecture

2017-12-20T19:40:00-05:00

Norma Merrick Sklarek was the first African American woman architect to be registered in New York and California. She was also the first black woman to be elected to the prestigious Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the first female director of Gruen and Associates, where she worked behind the scenes on some their largest architectural projects such as the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, CA. However, despite her immense responsibilities and vital contributions, she was rarely acknowledged on the finished project and you likely weren't taught about her in architecture school.

Seeking to change that, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation has recently launched a new website that highlights the far too often overlooked history of women in architecture by featuring the stories of 50 trailblazing women, Sklarek included. The website, Pioneering Women in American Architecture, is the culmination of a five-year research effort by the foundation made possible b...

How sexist is architecture? Female architects share their experiences

2016-04-13T12:54:00-04:00

After Ms. Hadid died on March 31 at 65, The New York Times, in an informal online questionnaire, asked female architects among its readers to talk candidly about their experiences in the profession: the progress they’ve made and the obstacles they still face on construction sites and in client meetings. Below are edited excerpts from a few of some 200 responses we received.

Architecture, already a tough field, can be even more challenging if you happen to be female. As Christine Matheu from Bloomington, Indiana recalls in this article, “There was a time when women were not allowed to be members of the Century Club. About that same time, as a young architect trying to survive, I was doing exhibition design and had been hired by an N.Y.C. art collector to do an installation of Piranesi prints for the Century Club. When the club learned that I was a woman architect, I was not allowed to install the exhibit. I, like many other women architects, found it much easier and less humiliating to just strike out on my own. I have been in my own practice now for 20 years.”

Also, a lifetime pro tip: STOP CALLING WOMEN OVER 18 GIRLS. Thanks!

Why International Women's Day matters (for architects)

2016-03-08T15:45:00-05:00

You’ve probably heard that today is International Women’s Day. But what exactly is it? And why is it important?

For many in the global West, the significance of March 8th is probably a lot less familiar than, say, Mother’s Day. In fact, the holidays originated around the same time, during the early 20th century, at the nascence of struggles for equal rights and suffrage. But unlike Mother’s Day, International Women’s Day has always been explicitly political: a day to both celebrate women and to fight for emancipation.

A first iteration of Women’s Day was organized by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, but its international observance began properly in 1911 with large protests throughout Europe, albeit on different days in the different cities. In 1914, International Women’s Day was held for the first time on March 8. Sylvia Plankhurst, the great British suffragette, was arrested in front of Charing Cross on her way to deliver a speech at Trafalgar Square.

Then, on March 8, 1917, R...

"Women in architecture" vs. "now in architecture": Mimi Zeiger on gender and architecture today

2016-03-01T15:56:00-05:00

For a while I’ve held the belief that identifying oneself as an architect is a kind of drag, a mannered persona donned for effect. How else to describe the clichéd sartorial signifiers: extreme eyewear, black daywear and designer footwear? As the education of an architect is so historically weighted to a canon of male practitioners, theorists and educators, a woman entering the field often operates as a kind of architectural androgyne...

"...we are trained to see world of design through black-framed, male-coloured glasses. Gender differentiation, then, comes with a thorny rhetorical question: ‘What’s the difference?’ If the goal is to recognise talent, experimentation and innovation, there seems no reason to create a binary in the field."

For more articles on issues related to gender-parity and -visibility in architecture, take a look at these links:

Results from The Architectural Review's 2016 Women in Architecture Survey are... not heartening

2016-03-01T13:21:00-05:00

One in five women worldwide say they would not encourage a woman to start a career in architecture [...] dissatisfaction among women is lower in practices where a significant proportion of management are women, and in practices with regular career development reviews and/or mentoring schemes, with mentoring the better of the two. [...] Nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of women worldwide say they have experienced sexual discrimination, harassment or victimisation during their career

Sigh. For more data on women in architecture, check out Archinect's Salary Poll.

Other related news: