SCI-Arc has announced its Spring 2017 lecture series. And not a single female architect was included in the list. Really, SCI-Arc?
Granted, the roster includes historian and theorist Sylvia Lavin as well as the artist Amalia Ulman—but the lack of a single practicing female architect is pretty striking. In recent years, criticism has been waged at institutions for privileging men when it comes to lecture series, as well as panels, faculty, exhibitions, firms, commissions, wages, and interpersonal relations.
It’s not exactly like there’s a paucity of exceptionally talented women in the field. The Feminist Wall of Shame also took note and posted on the omission.
124 Comments
OK, one more try: randomised, if all you care about is seeing good architecture, and you do believe there are women architects out there doing good work, how do you explain that SCI-Arc's spring 2017 lecture series has no female architects?
Or if you don't want to engage in conjecture, here's a yes or no question for you: Do you think it's reasonable that women architects who do good work and have rarely or never had an invitation from SCI-Arc to discuss their work would look at this line-up, including lots of white men from whom we've all heard a whole lot of talk already over many many years, and feel that the organizers might have some unconscious or conscious bias against women architects?
"Wondering who was you Mahalia when you wrote this..."
I don't need any Mahalia's to screw up a MLK-quote.
And this is why you don't know what you are talking about and (mis)quoting.
"Some people you just give em some rope and they hang themselves. Nice one, Marc."
Auto-asphyxiation's not really my thing though...
If you don't know you are doing it I guess.
"OK, one more try: randomised, if all you care about is seeing good architecture, and you do believe there are women architects out there doing good work, how do you explain that SCI-Arc's spring 2017 lecture series has no female architects?"
Who knows...ask 'em why they selected who they selected and if they intentionally or unintentionally did not include any female architect. I can't give you that answer and neither can you to be honest.
"Do you think it's reasonable that women architects who do good work and have rarely or never had an invitation from SCI-Arc to discuss their work would look at this line-up, including lots of white men from whom we've all heard a whole lot of talk already over many many years, and feel that the organizers might have some unconscious or conscious bias against women architects?"
I don't know if SCI-Arc rarely invites women and if they do or don't do so intentionally, aren't you projecting here? I only know there were no female architects in this particular lecture series because that's what this original news article was about. A lack of female speakers in one lecture series does not automatically add up to a bias against female architects by SCI-Arc, that's just jumping to conclusions based on your own personal and subjective feelings and is as unscientific as claiming global warming is a hoax because it was freezing this morning.
The fact that there are very few active female archinectors on the forum doesn't automatically add up to a conscious or unconscious bias of Paul Petrunia c.s. against female archinectors now does it?
"And this is why you don't know what you are talking about and (mis)quoting."
I do know what I'm talking about otherwise I wouldn't know how to misquote that ;-)
It's all conjecture here, since no one commenting here was present a the choosing of the lecturers or knows who did the choosing. The result, though, is not conjecture: no "practising women architects" are on the list, that's not a conjecture. What everyone here is doing is drawing their own conclusions from that fact, based on a point of view. But let's keep conjecturing, why not, it's what detectives do based on the crime scene evidence.
How might the person(s) who chose the list have done it? Were the projects on a table or screen without any info showing on the architect(s)? If that's the case, then (doing a quick search, 17% seems to be the figure of women partners or principals), if, let's say, 20 potential "practicing" lecturers were looked at, the odds were 3.4 in 20 that a women architect would be chosen at random. Not very high odds, but not impossible.
Now, without conjecturing to absurdity, it's likely that the lecturers were not chosen blindly, since the choosers would want to maybe pick new lecturers that haven't been at SCI-Arc before and also balance practitioners with some others (theorists, writers, etc). In that case, the decision to not have women practicing architects would now seem a bit more willful, since, if you were to know for a fact that this was the method of choosing, you can now ask why no portfolios of women architects were present on the table.
This is were opinions depart above, with some saying that no weight should be put on whether the portfolio represent women (or minorities, or whatever), just the quality of the work itself. Well, that's great in an ideal world, but as we know we don't live in an ideal world, so the choosing of who gets in the club, like everything and everywhere in the history of humans, depends on who is even allowed in the lobby and who's doing the choosing. Let's give a hypothetical and say that this list was at a journalism school and was one of lecturers who were good reporters and writers, and let's say this is around 1969 and someone calls Newsweek (or any other news organization). The choosers of that list would have called Newsweek and asked for a group of great reporters, but of course the editor would only give them the names of male reporters, since the women - who did as much work and wrote just as well as the men - were not allowed to be reporters at the time (yes, the plot of Good Girls Revolt on Amazon).
Now, a list with no women reporters at that time would have been no surprise, but what if a list of reporters now also had no women? Would you say then that it doesn't matter, it should only be the quality of the writing that matters? How about who is doing the choosing and their prejudices and preferences? Would it swing your opinion one way or the other if you were to find out that the person(s) doing the choosing at SCI-Arc were all men? (no, I don't know who they are in fact). Again, this is all conjecture...but if one did some real investigating at SCI-Arc, the plot would probably thicken...
It's all a joke, keep them laughing as you go...
After the recent presidential election in the USA I don't know how any thoughtful person, man or woman, isn't absolutely convinced that the patriarchy is pervasive and destructive and needs to actively dismantled. These SCI-Arc instructors think they are so avant-garde but having a lecture series comprised of a bunch of guys who look just like themselves and think just like themselves is about as old fashioned (not to mention uninteresting and unchallenging) as can be.
Donna Sink I sure do appreciate having you around here.
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"This is were opinions depart above, with some saying that no weight should be put on whether the portfolio represent women (or minorities, or whatever), just the quality of the work itself. Well, that's great in an ideal world, but as we know we don't live in an ideal world, so the choosing of who gets in the club, like everything and everywhere in the history of humans, depends on who is even allowed in the lobby and who's doing the choosing."
Since we don't know who's doing the choosing and what their criteria were/are when choosing, I still stand by my opinion that it should be the work that matters and should be the foundation for the selection.
Do you look at a building and say, 'that's a great building...for a female architect'? I sure hope not.
haruki, your post is so spot on and excellent. That Sci-Arc ---- *SCI-ARC*! The original rule-breaking rebellious wild child of ALL American architecture schools! ----- would put out this line up is embarrassing for them. It's so regressive.
(And thank you for the kind words. I always say when I'm arguing with a specific person here on Archinect I'm not trying to convince *that person*, I'm trying to have a public discussion that other people, readers, might glean from.)
Donna, on a side note, would you be as enthusiastic about the coming Venice curators if they were one of these old white men that were scheduled to lecture at SCI-Arc?
Your question doesn't make sense to me, randomised.
Well, I was just wondering for a sec here if you would find the news about Grafton curating the biennale also "super super cool!" if Grafton was run by two old white men or maybe then would only respond 'super cool', just 'cool' or even 'meh'...
So randomised you're asking if I would enjoy eating a slice of strawberry pie if the strawberries were replaced with bacon and the crust deleted?
No, I'm just asking if you would enjoy that slice of strawberry pie less if it was baked by an old white man ;)
Trick bag...
... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS5PUQ_X3Kg
For those that are saying this is a statistical blip, rather than indication of a policy or trend:
Fall 2016 Lecture Series: 1 event out of 11 featured female practitioners
Spring 2016 Lecture Series: 2 out of 16 events featured female practitioners
Fall 2015 Lecture Series: 2 out of 11 events featured female practitioners
I don't expect that representation gets anymore representative of academic and design based practice if you go further back...
Janosh, policy and trend are totally different things, do you think the people at SCI-Arc are conspiring and form actual policy to keep women practitioners out of their lecture series? Do you really think the leadership (20% female as I scrolled through the pictures and assumed peoples gender) or faculty (25% female, same method) would stand for that? Not to mention the students (almost 40% female, via google). I never heard anybody complain about the gender of their lecturers when I was studying not too long ago this decade (neat 50-50% ratio), not my female student-friends/colleagues nor my male ones. I only ever heard them complain about the level of the lecture, never about the gender of the lecturer. It somehow strikes me that it is often a disgruntled outsider that thinks there is a problem or even creates that problem because it fits their own personal political agenda. Has anyone actually checked with the students (male and female) how they feel about this storm in a teacup?
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