The effort aims to facilitate diversity among design and planning professionals and students, and foster innovation in teaching and research on race, gender and inequality in American cities.

Partially funded by the university’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, the initiative will ensure that the School of Architecture is on the leading edge of scholarship and practice regarding these important issues. — news.utexas.edu

The moment a space like [a gay bar] disappears, a sense of identity goes with it. “When you don’t have those spaces, you lose the ability to see yourself," [...]

"...we also need to continue to modify it in a way so everybody has access, so we’re not doing the same thing that the mainstream population is doing to us and isolating ourselves in certain spaces due to access.” — attn.com

Façadomy is new publication that looks at contemporary identity through the lenses of art and architecture. Façadomy's inaugural issue, Gender Talents explores the landscape of self-determined gender. It builds off the work of progressive sexologist Esben Esther P. Benestad, who has observed seven distinct genders in their practice as a therapist in Norway. Three prominent voices in contemporary art and architecture reflect on these seven themes... — Façadomy

Wilmington officials say the cancellation of an architect business conference due to HB2 will cost the city nearly $1 million.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced Monday it will nix its three-day conference scheduled for later this fall at the Wilmington Convention Center. AIA officials cited the passage of HB2 as the reason for the cancellation. — WETC

"It's a triple whammy," [Hadid] told the BBC Radio 4 in February. "I'm a woman, which is a problem to many people. I'm a foreigner — another problem. And I do work which is not normative, which is not what they expect. Together, it becomes difficult."

Like any high-profile architect, Hadid was expected to produce strong, functional designs. But as a woman, she also faced the added pressure of having her work interpreted as some sort of gender statement. — Los Angeles Times

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... — Mimi Zeiger | Architectural Review

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 — architectural-review.com

It's hard to remember that just a few decades ago it was difficult, if not impossible, for a woman alone to take out a mortgage. Federal legislation changed that.

And yet, it's still surprising to learn how dominant single women have become in the housing market today: Their share is second only to married couples, and twice that of single men. — npr.org

Many people have been in the frustrating position of waiting in line for a single-stall restroom while the restroom designated for the other gender sits empty. In establishments that have two single-user restrooms, making those restrooms inclusive of all genders will double the options for everyone. — Public Comment on Changing Gender Neutral Bathroom Code

Nothing screams commitment like something that is built on a concrete foundation and set in stone: literally. Go ahead, then. Design something that will last forever. — CollegeAtlas

Nowhere in the world has a city yet been conceived and constructed along the lines that these women planners would like. Nowhere in the world do women, and others who share the inclusive goals of gender planning, have the political power or access to capital that such an urban renewal project would require. — The Guardian

Monica Ponce de Leon, a leading American architect proud of being a Hispanic woman in a field long dominated by white men, wants to change the face of her profession.

[...] agreed to conduct a class earlier that day for juniors from John Hay High School - the vast majority of whom were black.

Ponce de Leon, dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Planning [...], wanted to inspire the students to enter a field in which the vast majority of practitioners don't look like them. — cleveland.com

Last fall, a group of transgender students at Wesleyan University tore down gendered bathroom signs and replaced them with ones that read, “All Gender Restroom.” [...] On college campuses across the country, student activists are dismantling what Sheila Cavanagh dubs an “architecture of exclusion,” more commonly known as gendered bathrooms. [...]

To this day, plumbing regulations in Massachusetts limit the number of gender-neutral bathrooms a building can have. — dailycollegian.com