Not surprisingly, then, the percentage of women in architecture radically decreases as one moves up the ladder toward more senior positions and prestigious honors. Female mentors and role models are in scarce supply. (Apart from Zaha Hadid, how many female architects can you name?) And though women might be growing in numbers in the lecture hall, they’re underrepresented on course syllabuses, which can send a message that women aren’t valued participants.

The Pipeline Is Not the Problem

It would seem obvious: If you want more female architects, teach more women to be architects. Other fields where women are underrepresented speak of a pipeline problem, the belief that a lack of diversity stems from a scarcity of available talent. But nearly half of architecture students are women, so why are so few sticking with the industry after graduation?

Even in 2018, assumptions that women would quit to marry, that they would be unable to command authority on job sites, or even that their creativity was not up to par, have persisted, resulting in unequal pay, recognition and access to opportunities. Every woman I spoke to on this topic has a story (or more likely, many stories) of men questioning their competency and qualifications, of not believing they were actually in charge of a project.

Several women said clients often assume that a female architect in a room is there to take notes or serve coffee. One woman was asked in a meeting if she had PMS; another recounted the time when a group of male colleagues complained to the head of the firm that they could not take orders from a woman; still another describes losing a promotion after becoming pregnant.

Several of the country’s most prestigious architectural programs, including Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, the University of Virginia and the University of California, Berkeley, have in recent years appointed women as deans or directors. It would be unreasonable to put the onus of transformation on a handful of women — and it’s insulting to all women to assume that these talented and capable architects were hired solely because of their gender. But those appointments do begin to change the balance of power.

“It is meaningful both symbolically and substantially that I’m a woman dean at Yale,” said Deborah Berke, dean of architecture at Yale and principal of her own firm. “We won’t see the culture change immediately. But we will see the results.”

In architecture, peer review dominates. When tenure decisions are made by committees made up of men, consist of interviews with mostly male candidates, and are sent to male provosts for approval, the system perpetuates itself. Female architects make less than their male counterparts at every level of experience.