Editorial
It’s not just about Women
For a profession that claims to be so concerned with the needs not only of architecture but also of society – namely ‘better buildings, communities and the environment’1 – the continuing gender imbalance in architectural education and practice is a difficult subject. Difficult because it’s been stagnant for some 30 years. In 2016, 92% of female architects reported that having children would put them at a disadvantage in architecture; 5% more than in the previous year.2 That so many women feel that their profession is prejudiced against them is shocking enough, but the fact that we have no reliable statistics to report male architects’ opinions about fatherhood is equally telling.
Beyond the confines of our discipline, a new generation of inclusive feminist critique is emerging, much of which (like our profession’s stated ambition) is characterised by a broader civic commitment. But whereas, after World War II, the architectural profession rallied around its obligation to fulfil a social need, the mainstream of our profession has capitulated its servitude to capitalism.
We believe that feminist thinking is a meaningful mechanism with which to respond to the inequalities of capitalism. But as we watch its fourth wave unfold we are met all too often with the stubborn misconception that feminism is only for and about women. In editing this book and writing our own chapters, our eyes have been opened to the breadth of the debate. As the chapters in this book demonstrate, we are all complicit. Through its diverse authorship, this book provides the first attempt to move the debate beyond theoretical partitions of gender towards something more propositional, actionable and transformative. This conversation has to be collective and critical: women cannot dictate a solution to men, just as men cannot dictate a solution to women.
A Gendered Profession is, therefore, about the failure of our profession to resolve its internal inequalities. At stake is more than just the lack of female representation. Sexism and gendered practices in architecture condemn all of us to a set of expectations around stereotypical behaviour. Male architects suffer from the same ingrained mechanisms of gender stereotyping that prejudice women, obliging us to place professional commitments above those to our family and children. And for those whose gender and sexuality do not fit comfortably within the binary conception of male or female, gay or straight, we find that the progress made in improving workplace conditions in the architect’s studio has yet to be matched in other aspects of the profession, not least the construction site.
A Spectrum of Voices
A Gendered Profession presents a spectrum of voices, from the academic to the personal, from those that are cutting edge to those that adopt a new perspective on familiar territories. Above all, they remind us that there is still embedded prejudice in our profession. There are still places and debates that are stubbornly behind the curve, other places where attitudes have slipped backwards, and yet other areas where there is foresight and heightened levels of sensitivity. This book opens up some of those contradictions.
In the process of editing this book, we have aimed to counter long-standing and stagnant forms of indignation with a progressive sense of collective mobilisation. We have proceeded on the basis that, for this book to be useful, we must avoid guilt trips and blame games. Instead we share shame and frustration, but recognise the need to make the cause common.
This book was imagined as a diagnostic check on our profession; the case is not closed. We hope that the book fosters an inclusive discussion on the subject of architecture and gender. While we hope we can address some of the injustices facing our discipline, we are under no illusion that the gender question will ever go away. We embrace instead the principle of fourth wave feminism that an attitude of inclusion will nurture a more discursive and enriched forum.
A Non-Binary Profession
This book may be called A Gendered Profession, but we are using gender as a Trojan horse to broach a wider conversation about diversity. Why gender? Firstly, there is a lot of material. Secondly, even white, middle class men – the majority in our profession – have a gender. We dispute not only the traditional binary definition of gender,3 but also a monodimensional conception of gender along a spectrum, one that ultimately categorises everyone between the same binary. A Gendered Profession is not just about women’s experiences of architectural education, practice and culture; gender is instead the key for a broader and more inclusive understanding of how our identity affects our experience of life and work.
A gender neutral toilet in a British university, 2016
A Gendered Profession has been written to address a fundamental issue of representation, one that is inconclusive and emerging. This issue of representation is being played out not only in books such as these but, more tangibly, in the built environment around us. As the image above shows us, we are learning as we go. The change in designation from being a ‘disabled’ toilet to one that also accommodates those who do not map to the classical gender divide (through the addition of a truncated torso, head and arms) feels clumsy and wholly inappropriate. Approaches to the inclusion of those who are differ from the norm have fundamental implications for those who design and maintain our built environment. They ask us to imagine a new built environment, one that confronts our society’s overly simplistic categorisation of male and female. Will buildings or cities aspire to be genderless in the future? And how will we design for them?
A Gendered Process
A Gendered Profession is concerned less with architectural outcomes than with the life of the architect. It was important for us, as editors, to be as open as possible to personal stories as much as to theoretically referenced arguments.
In editing and writing this book, the process has changed those involved. It has increased our empathy and understanding for others and our hope is that this book will inspire emotional as well as cerebral responses. Where it is concerned with historical narratives, A Gendered Profession seeks to move beyond a formal understanding to one that is experiential and participatory. Architectural history is more than a set of truisms. The reality of lived experiences can open up a significant disconnect between official theories and their practice. As a result, there is intentionally no consensus, no singular message or unifying voice.
A Gendered Profession is intended to be read as a community of voices sharing its stories. Many stories are about injustices, but just as many are concerned with the provocation of alternatives, solutions, and responses to root causes.
Our editorial viewpoints may not represent even a fraction of the diversity of the architectural profession but, by spanning regions, cities, gender and identities, we have sought to produce a book that attempts to do so. The dark art of editing a book is no less difficult or demanding in the digital age but we have taken full advantage of the democratising power of technology, securing unexpected authors and subjects via the unprecedented reach of global academic and professional networks. We have conducted editorial meetings online, sometimes on the other side of the world from one another. As one editor’s cursor writes and re-writes a sentence, another’s is at work on the paragraph below. In considering how to collate the many voices in this book, we have settled on four broad sections that we hope will structure, not confine, the commonalities and disjunctures between our authors’ points of view.
Part One: Practice, Politics and Economics
The practice of architecture is changing slowly. It is as much about networking, being an entrepreneur or activist, and pushing against conventions as it is about setting up shop. In the first part of A Gendered Profession we present a selection of chapters that show how the question of identity is inextricably linked to the evolving politics of gender. Through the multiple lenses of statistics, mythology and anecdote, we see that the dominant extant narrative is a defined field that has remained unchanged and is implicitly stereotyped. By revealing these limitations and by challenging the often invisible status quo, the authors included in this section seek to offer propositional tactics: ways forward rather than ways out. Whether the question is one of progression, authority or agency, we find that it is possible to transcend – or, perhaps more accurately, to side step – the contradictory structures and strictures of the profession. If we are to recast the role of the architect in society, the authors of these chapters urge that we must take on the political and economic challenges entwined within the gender debate in order to practise ethically and inclusively. It is critical to recognise that we operate within relative frameworks. As we age, climb the ladder of progression, grow as an architect, we change, too – more than we might like to think.
Part Two: Histories, Theories and Pioneers
To move forward it is necessary to secure some footings. While many of the chapters in this book are personal and deeply felt, there is often an underlying sense of being isolated in the moment of difference. The chapters in part two allow us to familiarise ourselves with a much wider experience of the gendered profession across a broader geographic spread. They make connections across history and through theory and, in so doing, enable those who are marginalised by their gender to recognise that they are neither the first nor the only ones to experience explicit and/or unconscious bias. The lives and careers of architects of the past are given a closer look, a queer reading, and from these re-viewed histories a tangible lineage to support our current and individual agencies is constructed. The history of the struggle to be recognised and considered within the mainstream is further supported by feminist and queer theories that unpick and view immediate, individual and emotive challenges within the cold context of theory. Removing the emotion from an issue constitutes part of the progress towards systemic change. These chapters also recognise how history and theory are made and framed by individuals. Many of the chapters pay tribute to pioneers who have laid a trail for others. And by working to expose how individual histories and personal experiences are interconnected and relevant to the future of the profession, the authors themselves become pioneers.
Part Three: Place, Participation and Identity
Part three examines the complex relationship between identity and practice that, perhaps, is the defining characteristic of an expanded and inclusive architectural practice. Powerful meta-processes of climate change, gentrification and disease play on some of these accounts, but through all of them runs a common strand of personal and collaborative responses to complex situations. Quite by chance, the same south London pub appears in two different chapters, the subject of interlinked stories from two perspectives about the role that spaces of representation and identity play in the development of the modern city. As LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) activists develop collaborative responses to individual buildings, we consider how theoretical frameworks can be informed to address issues of much greater applicability. In one of the frankest discussions of practice we have been privileged to include in this book, two practitioners describe how, over 30 years, their architectural practice has been formed around two very different approaches to problem solving.
Part Four: Education
Part four examines the role that education plays in perpetuating prejudicial hierarchies and divisions, and the way in which feminism has assiduously revealed these structures and provided examples of their destabilisation and change. It questions why it seems so difficult to teach architects about gendered spaces, arguing that if we are to change our starchitect culture, then we must change how we train students. This also requires us to scrutinise the ‘master-pupil’ relationship, and how competition and long working hours can reaffirm stereotypical hegemonic masculinity. It argues for new and different labour practices and hours of work that suit both genders and that resist traditionalism, discrimination and academic capitalism. The authors in this section also consider the interrelationship between gender and other identities such as sexuality, class and race, and how multiple and consolidated forms of discrimination are finally emerging as categories of exploration in their own right. It also considers that while growing numbers of women choose to study architecture, many more prefer the almost all-female space of an interior design programme, and the strategic position of the latter in challenging architecture’s claim to normativity. Whether architecture can learn from other disciplines’ efforts in order to create more gender equitable environments is also brought into focus, concluding with a statement of hope for a profession in which tacit values and judgments made on stereotypical assumptions will become a thing of the past.