The farther up you look in the world of architecture, the fewer women you see. In this chart, we’ve rounded up some common and publicly available metrics behind this claim. Like thousands of aspiring architects, we’ll start at the bottom and work our way up—while also pausing on the way to consider what these measures mean. — Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
Lian Chikako Chang, ACSA's Director of Research + Information and prolific Archinect blogger, has created a series of infographics charting the progress of women's roles in architecture. The statistics are, at a glance, both depressing and hopeful: compared to overall representation in the population, women occupy a disproportionally tiny slice of architecture's higher tiers, but the numbers do seem to be increasing over time.
Check out all the infographics in our image gallery below. Lian also posted an in-depth look at the infographics over at the ACSA blog, showing how the data was sourced and analyzed.
65 Comments
Maybe more women leave this profession becasue (larger) office politics can be so corporate and cut throat? In the Shawn Colvin sense, I'm at leat 40% woman, and I think it's that part of me that can't stand the lack of *true* collaborative work. The great man meme of starchitects we are taught from, isolated from their piers, the lone genius or even the martyr to the profession, seem incongruous with those characteristics we tend to associate with women. I just don't think this is something that one can dictate away. But there many women in smaller practices in the DC area. Infact, I'm the only male designer in my office. As silicon valley shows, you don't have to be a guido to fall into bro culture, it's just done more snarkily and ironically.
As for ethnic minorities, I don't think architecture is hostile to them, me being one, allthough I pass for white. In those funny lists of really *white* things to do and say, I think talking like an architect (stereotypically) would definatly qualify, so maybe there's this subliminal 'whites make the best quarterbacks'. I can't say, but besides some jerks, I've never experienced it.
Maybe if we embraced the artistic side of the profession whole heartedly without freaking out about decoration all the time we'd clear some of this up. Maybe the martyr to the profession hours young architects are expected to put in make the seniors fear investing in someone who will get married and leave eventually, or at a minimum will insist on humane hours that would undermine their own herculean sacrifices. Who knows.
Nice post, midlander, and Thayer, yours too. I think there are statistics to back up the idea that more women practice in sole prop or very small firms, probably because the corporate or boutique firms tend to offer an endurance race rather than a career-life balance.
The same reason why there aren't many male nurses and male secretaries.
Back when our society was solely based on notions of traditional gender roles, the education system was also structured to nurture our children to function properly in this closed system. Now the next generation whose education system was much more focused on gender equality is moving up on the ladder. We will see much more. Just wait.. It takes time for any generatioanl shifts to become more obvious.
Maybe more women leave this profession becasue (larger) office politics can be so corporate and cut throat?
Actually I would say that women are typically more cut throat...Maybe dose not seem that way on the surface, but that's only because they are much slicker than men...
career-life balance.
Donna, I think that's the biggest problem for women...The workplace is structured in a way that makes "traditional female gender roles" very difficult to fulfill. Men are taking on more responsibilities with house work and child care, but overall, these tasks are still very much fulfilled by women. Having done the stay at home dad thing for a year I can attest to the difficulty. Also, the insane cost of child care makes it economically impossible to work. I was at one point paying 500$ a week for my 2 kids to attend day care before they were in school. If the typical employee makes 40k a year that only leaves 300$ "profit" subtract the cost of commuting to work and there is really no good reason to work when you have small kids. One parent has to make the sacrifice, and more often than not, the man is unwilling. This is not fair, but societal expectations and social stigmas placed on men make the decision difficult...And, whether we admit it or not, the "role" reversal causes marital problems. Women are attracted to "the provider" and when this ceases to exist it causes insecurities in men and resentment in women...In Europe they have free daycare, paid 6 month maternity leave, etc....This would make all the difference in the US but we cant even get social medicine so don't hold your breath...
No matter how "modern" we like to believe that we are, our brain structures have not changed much in the last 200k years. We may say "yeah being a stay at home dad is awesome" but eventually those primordial emotions begin to creep in and biological programming begins to replace modern reason. This goes for both men and women.
Are you done yet, j-lax?
Not yet...boobies!!!...ok now I'm done.
Oh hai, think I found part of the problem:
Also Part Of The Problem
^haha that is just retarded. Long Island. Ha. Everyone is broke and miserable in NY except the top 1-2%ers. The entire ny metro area is full of miserable overworked people that live paycheck to paycheck.
Donna - to note having legislated minimum leave is no panacea.
A couple years ago my wife (also an architect) + I moved to a country with required 12-weeks paid and optional 12-weeks unpaid leave. At the time we had no kids nor plans to. After she had a couple good interviews that went nowhere, one interviewer took some pity and explained to her that no one was going to hire a young woman who was recently married and childless, at the risk that they'd soon need to hire a fill-in for 6 months.
Another interviewer from an American firm's local office asked directly whether my wife intended to get pregnant during the next 2 years - and afterwords insinuated my wife was lying when she said no. That interviewer was a woman herself.
I can actually see where some of the firms are coming from though. In an office of 5 people, having 1-2 women take 6 months leave could be a big disruption. This is a tough problem. We could propose some public insurance scheme that pays companies to cover the loss of labor for parental leave, but it's hard to sell the public on subsidizing businesses even where it could benefit employees.
just for the sake of re-igniting a smoldering debate:
Women prefer to work for men
That's an inflammatory way to summarize an interesting survey result. According to the survey the % of women who prefer working for men is greater than those who prefer working for women - only 36% of women have no preference. Men also prefer working for men, but by a smaller margin - and 60% don't care either way.
On the other hand, businesses with greater ratios of female leaders tend to perform better. Not clear if that's cause or correlation though (a company run as a good-old-boys' club is probably bad for business in many ways)
Ads you say, midlander, the important aspect of that survey is that the number of people who don't care what gender of boss they have is on the rise. I would think this implies that more people are acknowledging that having a *good* boss is what's important.
Although maybe it's the opposite: maybe more people think their bosses suck regardless of gender?
I'm not sure how to read it actually. Maybe there is a big difference between younger/older respondants which isnt reflected in the graphs. Or possibly some people prefer what is already familiar. Mostly I thought it was interesting women are more likely to have a preference than men about the boss's gender. Im curious to see what others think is the reason for the results.
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