Women Architects and Their Discontents - SAGE Journals

039363 Fowler & Wilson

20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 101

Sociology Copyright © 2004 BSA Publications Ltd® Volume 38(1): 101–119 [DOI: 10.1177/0038038504039363] SAGE Publications London,Thousand Oaks, New Delhi

Women Architects and Their Discontents ■

Bridget Fowler and Fiona Wilson University of Glasgow

A B ST RAC T

The article critically investigates recent assumptions that professional women are en route to equality with professional men by assessing the field of architecture as a case study. It addresses the poorer completion rates for women architectural students, together with the lower proportions of professionally registered and promoted women architects.The article explores, in particular, Bourdieu’s theories of gender divisions and higher professions as an explanatory grid for understanding these phenomena, deploying especially two late works, Masculine Domination (2001) and The State Nobility (1996). It is argued that the extended Bourdieusian theory of practice illuminates the interview data gathered from women architects, especially through its emphasis on a disposition to naturalize domination. While Bourdieu’s position is not without weaknesses, this theory sheds light on the difficulties women practitioners are found to face empirically, especially in combining architecture and parenting. K E Y WORDS

architects / Bourdieu / domination / entrepreneurialism / gender / genius

A

highly regarded social scientist has predicted the imminent ‘end of patriarchalism’, while warning that this transformation will be no velvet revolution (Castells, 1997). Placed in such a context, the architectural profession appears as an anomaly, since the practice of creating large-scale buildings is still virtually monopolized by men. Indeed, research on the professions as a whole shows continuing under-representation of women (Crompton, 1987; Witz, 1992). Although there has been some uneven progress towards equality in the last 25 years as more women have entered the professions

101


102

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 102

February 2004

(Valian, 1998), men continue to benefit from advantages in recruitment, pay and promotion. This article dissects the case of architecture as a typical masculinedominated profession. By focusing on this distinct cultural field, we aim to clarify the material and cultural constraints that block the path to gender progress. It is only by grasping the social relations on which women’s participation is premised that equal access to the fields of modern professional performance can be granted. Bourdieu’s theory of domination helps to provide such clarification. The empirical study portrayed in this article shows that both female and male architects define parenting as a natural task for women. We argue that, in the context of the highly competitive architectural market from the late 1960s, this perception accentuates female architects’ professional disadvantages. There is a mound of wider British evidence that the route towards equal participation of men and women in the architectural profession is likely to be arduous. The latest research reveals that young women often leave the profession, due in part to lengthy hours, slow career progression and low pay (RIBA [Royal Institute of British Architects] Journal, 2001; Rothschild and Rosner, 1999: 10). British architects’ earnings overall are substantially lower than those in medicine or law, but women earn even less than men within the profession (Architecture Today, 1993). Women have found it easier to enter architecture than, say, engineering, but the decline in architectural work over the past few years is linked to women’s lower registration. Discrimination is less important than these material factors; nevertheless, one RIBA survey found that more than half the trained women had personally experienced disparagement (Architecture Today, 1993). The same survey also showed that two-thirds of women architects have taken time off or opted for part-time work, usually because of children. Architectural culture is marked not only by the time-discipline of long office hours, but also by a demanding task-discipline (Thompson, 1967). Project deadlines and appointments with clients require an extended working day, encroaching on the architect’s leisure time. In this context, the effect of women’s responsibilities for children continues to be disadvantageous. While no doubt welcoming the double bind of being architect and mother, they can often only cope by going part-time. Such a strategy risks marginalization (Adams and Tancred, 2000: 93). Even at the point of entry into the architectural profession, there is a disparity between men and women students. Statistics show that the rapid increase of women in training between 1975 and 1985 (from 13 to 26%) has now slowed. Through the 1990s the proportion only increased slightly; RIBA stating the current proportion as 34 percent (RIBA, 2001). An even smaller percentage of women, 12 percent (compared with 5% in 1975), are recorded as registered architects,1 (Architects’ Registration Board, 2003; RIBA, 2001). Indeed, the proportion of women architects is low internationally. Even in Scandinavia, with its generous state maternity provision, only 20 percent of architects are women (Lorenz, 1990: 8). In Scotland the figure is


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 103

Women architects and their discontents Fowler & Wilson

9 percent, while in Spain, France, Germany and Iceland the percentage of women architects ranges similarly from 10 to 16 percent (RIBA, 1994; Scottish Executive, 2000). The ‘emancipated’ USA only possesses 8.9 percent women among registered architects and 8.7 percent among architectural academic staff (Coleman, 1996: xi). The American profession is also highly restrictive on other social criteria, with all but a few architects being white with college-educated parents. Women drop out of American architectural schools at a far greater rate than men and, even if they stay in the profession, earn only 75 percent of their salary (Progressive Architecture, 1994). More than half the American female architects sampled know cases of gender discrimination: one-third have experienced it themselves (Bussel, 1995). Despite such a complex environment, one arresting theory of masculinity in late modernity (MacInnes, 1998) contends that it is in the nature of both capitalism and rational-legal administration to be gender-blind, while childbearing has been drastically reduced. These three revolutionary shifts – capitalist, bureaucratic, demographic – create the condition for feminist critiques of patriarchy. MacInnes comments ‘[It is] a bad time to be a man, compared to the supremacy men have enjoyed in the past – and this is a thoroughly good thing’ (1998: 55). We argue that this judgement is based on a ‘scholastic fallacy’, which substitutes logical models for more uncertain generalizations about social practices (Bourdieu, 2000: 50–60). Against this, we develop an explanation of the deep-rooted gender inequalities within architecture in terms of a ‘naturalized social construction’ of masculine domination (Bourdieu, 1961: 8; 2001: 23; see also MacInnes, 1998: 37). What deeper structural continuities explain why the profession of architecture continues to be such unfavourable territory for women? We suggest that Bourdieu’s general theory of practice offers the best model for explaining the lived experience agents have of this field. We shall firstly use his ideas of cultural capital to highlight the particular illusio (game) of the architectural profession, with its recruitment from the state nobility2 of the great architectural schools. Second, taking our clues from his Masculine Domination (2001), we reveal the mechanisms ‘eternizing the arbitrary’ of the first great historical division of labour. Third, we go on to document rigorously, by means of interview, how this touches women architects in their everyday working lives, and their male colleagues’ responses to them. Finally, we isolate a decisive shift of the architectural profession away from the ‘gentlemanly artist’ to the architectural entrepreneur. Using Bourdieu’s conception of ‘neo-liberal flexibility’ (1998) alongside Boltanski and Chiapello’s nomadic, ‘connectionist man’ [sic] (1999), we argue that architecture has been in many ways the leading edge of a distinctive and increasingly time-disciplined ‘management by projects’. In these conditions, it is our view that while the profession will acquire a larger minority of women, it is unlikely to be on the brink of rapid movement towards gender equality.

103


104

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 104

February 2004

Architecture and the Public Sphere In seeking to elucidate why the tiny number of women architects should find their hold within the field so tenuous, we turn to Bourdieu’s historical argument that women have been denied access to the truly noble tasks (Bourdieu, 2001: 60). The classic Renaissance architectural texts illuminate this, prescribing for the male architectural profession the possession of both female and male qualities, which in effect made women architects redundant. Antonio Filarete, the founding father of 16th-century Italian architecture, foregrounds this female sensitivity metaphorically, advising the architect that he should conceive the building alongside his client or patron, nurture it in his body for nine months, deliver it and tend it closely for the first months of its creation (Agrest, 2000: 363). A pattern of ‘class elevation’ from the medieval craft of mason was accomplished in this field throughout the West. This was one of the consequences of the state establishment of the French Academy of Architecture in 1671, for example. It is crucial to see this elevation as not simply a class strategy but also an exclusively masculine goal. By the mid-19th century architects had become legitimated as artists; by the 1930s they had become a gentlemanly profession (Saint, 1983: 114). The spectacular transgressions in building design of figures such as Charles Rennie MacIntosh, Otto Wagner, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Bauhaus architects had a huge symbolic effect within the profession. But the prior condition for such rule-breaking was their knowledge of the historical field and love of the architectural game, that is, their secure accumulation of architectural cultural capital. This possession had been the source of long struggles vis-à-vis the more practical training of builders, against whom architects appeared, paradoxically, as feminized. A major dimension of the current crisis of architecture derives from this earlier, 19th-century, development, which split off the modernist restricted field (high culture) from the commercial, expanded field (popular culture). Bourdieu reads modernist aesthetics as a particular form of intellectual resistance to commodification. Through this ‘high’ pursuit of art for its own sake, a cultivated bourgeois elite set itself against a commercial popular culture, which was viewed through the prism of the scholastic attitude as facile, sensual and appealing only to the emotions (1984: 486–9). It should be added that such mass culture was often figured as a woman, who seduced through cheap luxuries. The truly autonomous male architect therefore kept apart from the spheres of domestic economy, housing design and social reform in 19th-century women’s magazine writings (Favro, 1996: 303). Given this equation, it is hardly surprising that until the First World War even the bohemian avant-garde movements displayed unexpected and formidable barriers to women. Bourdieu has described the great transition from the rule-bound ‘academic eye’ of the classical arts to the anomic ‘fresh eye’ of High Modernism, founded on the unregulated competition of heterodox schools. Architecture was in the


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 105


vanguard of such a shift, yet it was only exceptionally open to women (Favro, 1996: 298). The American, Julia Morgan, who designed 700 buildings in her career (1902–57), had initially to force her way into the Academy system through the French Ecole des Beaux Arts (Boutelle, 1981). Even in Britain, where the apprenticeship system prevailed – and an exceptional woman like Ethel Charles might be articled – there were still marked intellectual and status barriers to women’s entry as equals. In the West as a whole, it is only with the emergence of the New Women, from the 1900s to 1930s, that women architects broke through these barriers. The pioneers, Julia Morgan, Lilly Reich and Eileen Gray, came from wealthy backgrounds, thus representing specific instances of Bourdieu’s general pattern of the conversion of economic into cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1996: 58; Boutelle 1981; Colomina, 1996).

Bourdieu’s Field of Cultural Production and Architecture Architecture is a fit subject for Bourdieu’s theories, although not undertaken at length by him. Firstly, he states that architects constitute a component of the ‘State nobility’ – that elite within the dominant class whose legitimacy is backed by the state’s accreditation of their higher education. Second, architects within the Modern Movement have often been viewed through the language of artistic ‘genius’ (Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, etc.). A Bourdieusian analysis would expect to reveal in architectural modernism the relative freedom from material urgencies and the secure sense of the future which are the social prerequisites for significant formal innovation. As in any other part of the artistic field, it is only from within the habitus of the dominant class that is it possible to pose a symbolic revolution in architecture (Bourdieu, 1993: 198, 252–3). The gender connotations of even the modern conception of genius should also be identified, with its combination of masculine and feminine traits in the male artist. The ‘love of art’ is not a natural, randomly distributed gift (Bourdieu, 1984). Equally, while love of beautiful buildings leads students to the best architectural schools, such recruits have high levels of cultural capital, which in turn are linked to their privileged social origins (Bourdieu, 1984: ch 2, 1996: 57–9). Of entrants at the Bartlett School of Architecture (London), 78 percent had fathers in management and the professions, 20 percent had clerical backgrounds, while only a tiny fraction, 2 percent, came from (skilled) manual origins (Stevens, 1995). Even at Sydney University, the architecture department recruited 21 percent above the University’s average from private schools (Stevens, 1995: 114). A dialectic of consecration and recognition means that the elite architectural school chooses those who have chosen it, and confers on them its aura (Bourdieu, 1996: 104–5). The state nobility in general demonstrates its cultural capital in a certain physical disposition of being-in-the-world, displayed in their bodily assurance and distinguished appearance (1996: 35–6, 295). Such a

105


106

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 106

February 2004

nobility is demarcated by its dual modes of learning – dignified knowledge and technical expertise – from which it acquires its ‘magic’ (Bourdieu, 1996: 118). Bourdieu’s analyses of state nobility biographies, although not focusing specifically on architects, reveals the linked bodily and intellectual controls at work within this educational ascetic elect. We note the ‘rites of institution’ of the colleges’ esprit de corps, which are marked by unending competition, severe treatment and a cult of ‘pure’ activities. These set apart the ‘real men’ of the elect from the ‘profane, pragmatic and profitable’ concerns of ordinary men (Bourdieu, 1996: 118): we would add that they also separate a masculine elect from the totality of women. Although women start off in equal numbers in some architectural courses, their lower completion of the final degree and professional exams may be partly explained by the hazards of the training. One of the ‘rites of institution’ in architectural education, which fits the Bourdieusian model, is the studio system (Ahrentzen and Anthony, 1993; Walker, 1997: 10, 26; Weisman, 1999: 169–70). Architectural studios exhibit a well-known academic syndrome, in which students believe that mystery – or the neglect of rational teaching methods – is an indication of the mastery of the instructor (Argyris, 1981). The ‘masters’ are almost always male. The design juries are the most feared and revered part of architectural education, where students’ models for their final projects are at stake, shaping their future careers. At most schools the typical jury includes only men; where there are female staff, they contribute little. Design education is structured through an individualistic masculine culture somewhat like a boot camp (Stevens, 1995: 112), which is dominated by competitions, star systems, and high-risk gambles (Ahrentzen and Groat, 1992).

Bourdieu and Male Domination Bourdieu’s late work, Masculine Domination, asks us to drop certain oppositions which are barriers to thought – the polarized alternatives of mechanistic materialism or a spiritualistic theory of action; mind or body; coercion or willed complicity. It reveals the extraordinary power of ‘doxa’ (orthodoxy) to naturalize gender in the form of a profound biologization (2001: 23), a preconception which the research data to be discussed here shows is perpetuated by architects. Bourdieu identifies the influence of phallocentric classifications as a form of ‘symbolic violence’. The ‘natural attitude’ or taken-for-granted, doxic stance towards gender is forged quietly, behind the stage of conscious ideological conflicts. Unlike many traditional philosophers, Bourdieu explores through an ethnographic case study the social and material conditions in which such gender orthodoxy has been rooted historically (2001: 9). He revisits his own 1950s and 1960s research data on the peasant society of Kabylia, Algeria, for his studies of masculine domination in the 1990s. Here he shows that naturalized phallocentric assumptions derive their plausibility from the everyday practices of the division of


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 107


labour. In particular, the ritualized separation of older youths from younger boys in Kabylia serves to disguise or mask the sharper, irremediable division between all boys and their excluded sisters (1990: 14). The men themselves are trapped by privilege, as in the need to assert their manliness in all circumstances (2001: 50). They, too, are mastered by masculine domination: ‘[O]ne begins to suspect that the torturer is also the victim …’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 23). At present, argues Bourdieu, we live in a transitional epoch. The three most crucial structures perpetuating masculine domination within modernity have been the Family, the School and the Churches. These have served, despite contradiction and change, to create a ‘pessimistic vision’ of women, with even educated culture underpinned until recently by Aristotelian assumptions about their inferiority. Thus today, women cluster in paediatrics but not surgery, in the Faculties of Arts rather than Science, and in lower-ranking fields rather than higher-ranking ones in disciplines such as philosophy (2001: 91). Furthermore, in the bourgeois family, women have been responsible for ‘the economy of symbolic goods’, especially the appearance and unity of the family as a whole. Bourdieu argues, contentiously in our view,3 that women’s work in the contemporary labour market tends to recapitulate this gender division of labour, centring on the presentation and representation of the self and on expertise in appearances. Women are thus fettered by a strange love of their own ‘fate’ to elect to continue their own dominated femininity or to use it commercially. He notes more perceptively that men may merely move the location of women’s oppression to the labour market, perpetuating their own domination via women’s new positions. This theory has an extraordinary appeal for its grasp of the seriousness of the game of masculine honour. It has the distinctive capacity to understand both the economic/political interests and the purely symbolic ‘honour’ that motivate men in their competitive struggles between each other for reputation (2001: 44). This is true in relation to all those great ‘games’ kept separate from women so as to be pursued more intensely by men: from the military conflict of the Kabylean clansmen to the professional struggle of the male Impressionists for recognition within the art world. In these quests for posthumously ‘making a mark’ women have virtually failed to feature at all. Although unanalysed by Bourdieu himself, modern architecture is, as we have suggested, clearly a case in which men have preserved their right to the most ‘noble tasks’ (Bourdieu, 2001: 56–63). Indeed, the privilege to tear open the soil and to create great monuments has everywhere been denied women, even in the United States (Coleman, 1996: xi). Public ceremonial buildings are those tied up intimately with collective memory, serving to reflect back to the group a dignified image of itself (Bourdieu et al., 1999: 126): their design has been monopolized by men.4 Where Bourdieu emphasizes the reproductive power of the masculine doxa and the ‘cunning of masculine reason’ we would put more stress on women’s resigned accommodation and their ‘usurpatory’ strategies to challenge male monopolies, particularly from those well-placed through their cultural capital.

107


108

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 108

February 2004

Bourdieu’s strategy is to identify, alongside gender struggles, the competing trend of the persistent regrouping of men to secure access to the most synthesizing, dignified and theoretical tasks (2001: 84). But we need also to theorize women’s challenge more than he does. The history of the continuous struggles to usurp the male medical monopoly serve as an example. Despite the shoring up of professional privileges by male doctors via their exclusion of women from universities and their monopoly of state registration, women gradually overcame their segregation by establishing their own medical education, successfully contesting men’s unique entitlement to practise (Witz, 1992: 68). Such a universal ‘usurpatory strategy’ appears now to have been successful. Indeed in the age group up to 40, close to one-third of Scottish hospital consultants are women (Scottish Executive, 2000: 35, 36). Yet, if sometimes weak on such innovative responses to gender divisions, Bourdieu is surely right to insist that the older male supremacy is still an active structuring principle in the field of medicine, in general permitting women advancement only where symbolic honour is less and material rewards are lower (2001: 91–2).

Interviews with Architects Our study aimed to compare and contrast the experience of men and women in the British architectural profession. Recruited initially through the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), with numbers increased by a snowball technique, 72 architects across Scotland – 32 women and 40 men – agreed to taped interviews in 1998–9. The interviews have been analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Far more men than women in the sample were senior partners, owners or sole principals of a practice (Table 1).5 One reason for this might be the age of interviewees: well over half the sample of women (21 of 32) were aged between 26 and 35 years, whereas 31 of the 40 men were over 36 years old. Hence 22 women (69%) but only 15 (38%) of the men were not yet established professionally, having worked for under 15 years. More men (36 or 90%) than women (19 or 59%) were married or living with a partner. In other respects, men and women were similar: thus a majority of both sexes (41 or 57%) had partners who were in profes-

Table 1 Breakdown of sample by gender and role in practice

Associate

Senior Partner/ Owner/ Principal

Total

4 15

3 2

31 8

40 32

19

5

39

72

Architect (junior)

Project/team leader

Male Female

2 7

Total

9


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 109


sional/managerial jobs. Equally, a very high proportion (50 or 69%) had fathers from the same socio-economic groups, although only 15 (21%) had architects in their families. Only one mother of a female architect was an architect herself, but it is interesting that 19 (59%) of the women architects had mothers who were in professional/managerial/technical jobs.

Findings Without exception, every architect portrayed architecture as requiring long hours of work in a highly competitive environment. Since it was necessary to submit complex designs into competitions for work, success required making architecture ‘your life’ (Sara,6 age group 31–35). In architecture, reported one (Kirsty), you had to do finely detailed plans in order to tender for projects, which meant working protracted hours. A principal architect (James, age group 56+) talked of how he worked a 70-hour week (a 12-hour day in the week and half days on Saturdays and Sundays). Another male architect summed up the profession as ‘one big fight’, graphically depicting the struggles to win contracts: ‘It’s a battlefield’ (Ian, age group 36–40). Although 18 (45%) of the men described the profession as competitive and back-stabbing, a relatively higher number of women (18 or 56%) spoke in these terms, perhaps more initially seduced by the apparent dignity and disinterestedness of the architectural game. Male architects spoke also of the struggle for success. Relentless self-promotion, stated one, was necessary for achievement: there was ‘a lot of arrogance and big egos in the profession’ (Tom, age group 26–30). The disenchantment of the women was even more evident. They talked of male architects as building ‘monuments to themselves’ (Fiona), of the profession being ‘very competitive and quite bitchy’ (Jean), of the contests being more ‘brutal’ than they had expected (Anna).

The Lived Experience of Women Architects It was universally acknowledged that having children changed the lives of female architects more than those of men. Most women architects assumed that without continuous full-time employment they would be denied equality of opportunity. Yet they tended also to minimize their losses rather than suffer a life of uncomfortable resistance: they accommodated themselves to a gendered world of work. Although there is some evidence from the interviews with the youngest women (26 to 30 years), of ‘huge changes’ due to more enlightened attitudes from the young male architects, our study suggests marked career disparities. We focus first on three typical trajectories, marked by different responses and strategies, but all moulded by the same underlying structural constraints.

109


110

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 110

February 2004

Cass Dixon (26–30 age group) was a young woman who had already gained a reputation in Scotland, and was earning just above the median for British senior staff. Both her father and brother were electrical engineers in the building trade, so she felt inured to chauvinist attitudes such as theirs, and at ease communicating on the building site. Her mother and grandmother had been ‘matriarchs, with a commanding presence’, possessing a range of practical skills which they had passed on to her. Cass’ designs cater for her clients’ stated needs. For example, moving the kitchens in a housing block to the front so that they could work and simultaneously watch their children at play. She constantly emphasized that a design structure should never be too ‘rigorous’ or like ‘living in an art-gallery’ but should engender a sense of well-being. I’ve done a lot of buildings which are organic and curvy and feminine: the males do buildings that are more strict – [even] kind of fascist, very ordered. There is an order in what I do but it’s more free-flowing. Some will see a male architect’s building as a poetic gesture, but the ordinary folk will see it as boring. Ordinary folk can relate more to my work. There has been a backlash [against] modernism, which is seen as depersonalized architecture. When I contributed to Hayman Square … I took the same building as a male architect had done and added a curvilinear front. I used an archway at the end of the street, and … we created a soft garden. … you should have an exercise with a group of women – the women would have a different view from the men. It’s some kind of softness … Men are still ordered, women feel the space … to get a sense of well-being from it. Male architects just want it to look grand.

She enjoys the camaraderie of the project work in office teams: ‘Our office is very egalitarian. The architects do the same jobs as the assistant architects. I’ve not been pigeon-holed to do a certain kind of housing …’. But there was a tiny fly in the ointment: The architect for [a commission which she had just finished] was listed as Alan McNichols [a partner], but he came on site every two years or so. So even if women have done the building you still don’t get the credit at the end.

While subscribing to an anti-rationalist architectural aesthetic and a female angle of vision, children posed a dilemma for Cass. Architectural practice presented relentless imperatives: I can work to whatever hour I like – [since] I have no children … . My friends, once they have had children, have gone part-time. [This] would be very difficult to combine with the deadlines … . You can’t take the work home, you are all in it together … . Architecture is a vocation – you can’t do it half-heartedly. To be a good architect you have to live the architectural life.

Francesca McNeill, (50–55 age group) spoke vividly about the meagre earnings of her existence within a husband-and-wife private architectural practice. Between the two of them, they were at present making less than an average single wage a year. She contrasted this bitterly with her own family of


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 111


doctors and lawyers, emphasizing that she has discouraged her own children from going into architecture for this reason. She accepted that her own situation had been profoundly affected by her desire to look after her children as well as the absence of part-time jobs. Working in a real-life project is an extremely time-absorbing activity. It’s understandable that projects cannot be delayed because women are working part-time. With the advent of the computer and internet, allowing work at home, this restriction may disappear.

However, her main critical target was a quite different form of inequality. Francesca had been in private practice for many years, with a number of major projects built, and a very well-equipped office in terms of CAD (computer-aided design). Despite this, the present system, with large projects awarded in connection with the Private Finance Initiative, discriminates against small practices like hers. She felt that the discrimination had nothing to do with gender, only with the position of the small architectural practitioner. In relation to teaching employment opportunities, she criticized the present dichotomy between practice and the university, which excludes practitioners like her, with a hands-on approach and with no star name: Architects should know, first of all, how to build, then accountancy, legislation. Architecture in real life has more to do with those very modest occupations, the trades, and maybe in this, most women are at a disadvantage compared with men. Most men have more practical knowledge about the use of tools. In our period, women have lost skills, such as dressmaking, which once taught you about materials and assembly.

Patricia Cartwright (46–50 age group) began by talking about her forced resignation from her job as an architect in a private practice, when she had a baby. Despite this, she had now found a secure niche for herself and felt that there was a level playing field: ‘There is nothing special and nothing different (about women) and I’m not prepared to let sex come into it.’ When she had been contacted by a group aiming for the advancement of women in architecture, her response had been ‘What about the men?’ Yet even Patricia recounted the case of a woman architect she knew who was driven to tears by a contractor and had never been back to a building site since. She was worried that in many fields women were being promoted because they were women, supplementing this with reference to the recent increase in the number of women lawyers. Against the view that women were the victims of discrimination in promotion, she asserted that ‘women peak in their abilities earlier than men’. Later in the interview, she discussed the ‘glass ceiling’ in different terms. She conceded that if she had kept her maiden name, she might have been more successful in bringing in business: her father was well known in the profession. She also explained that she had applied for 30 or more jobs when she first qualified and was probably not offered one earlier because she was a woman.

111


112

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 112

February 2004

Patricia was successfully drawing on female connections, having gained contracts through her baby-sitting circle and reading group. Now in partnership with her husband, they had brought in new work by specializing in restoring listed buildings.

Social Class Origins and Strategies Eighty-six percent of both men and women felt that it would be an advantage to have family members who were architects. However, respondents were split over the role of class origins in the profession. Thirty-three (46%) denied the significance of a high class background in establishing a career. Just under a third, however, disagreed, perceiving this as ‘social capital’ (in Bourdieusian terms), which was necessary or useful in gaining clients for a business. One interviewee thought that class was helpful for establishing the networks from which clients emerged, but argued otherwise for its irrelevance: ‘[i]t is not important if you are just an employee’ (Susan, age group 31–35). Many interviewees expanded on the issue of social capital, arguing that if you came from the landed gentry this would definitely be an advantage in building business ‘because you are one of them … . You simply do not get jobs without contacts’ (Stephen, age group 46–50). Other typical comments were that a Fettes (public school) accent conferred a desirable ‘ring of authority’ (Catherine, age group 51–55) or that the early ‘accolade’ of a partnership was in fact linked to possessing a class position that would bring in the clients (Patrick, age group 41–45). But if class was like possessing a joker which trumped other cards, other connections might operate as useful picture cards. Patrick argued: ‘In Edinburgh you either have an old school tie, which gets you involved in all those sorts of [client] groups, or you have not, which gets you involved with the Jews, Irish, … and all the other incomers … .’ Another man believed that in Dundee it was an advantage to be middle or working-class; the developers, from whom you gained business, were often of working-class origin (Malcolm). Against these, David was typical of the cynical minority: Those from the higher social classes are better connected; they have access to a more effective, and a wider network, through their father’s contacts. If they have been to a private school they have a network with a wider range of successful people.

Gender Difference Gender differences, and the inequalities based on them, produced some surprising findings which occasionally reversed the symbolic violence of pejorative male judgements about women. A greater proportion of male than female respondents thought that the attributes that made architects good at their jobs were unrelated to gender (28 or 70% male versus 15 or 47% female). Indeed,


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 113


men were much more likely to claim that women were no longer discriminated against when competing for jobs (26 or 65% m., 16 or 50% f.), or for promotion (18 or 45% m., 9 or 28% f.), thus disregarding all the historical consequences of masculine domination. Conversely, a substantial number of female interviewees – and nearly as many men – were disposed to an ‘ethic of suspicion’. They detected a ‘glass ceiling’ in architecture (15 or 47% f., 18 or 45% m.), whilst some believed that female architects have to work harder to become respected (6 or 19% f., 5 or 13% m.). It was particularly women who labelled promotion as a gender issue (17 or 53% f., 9 or 23% m.). Male architects, having been recently converted to the case for gender equality, tended to think that it had been achieved, substituting an abstract universalism for the ‘specificity of practical logic’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 51). Women architects, especially, viewed gender equality as a more complex and problematic matter. Discrimination in architectural education was noted by many respondents. There was a bias against employing women as lecturers: four men in the sample – but only one woman – mentioned that they had part-time teaching jobs. The disparagement of the efforts of female students was noted by both sexes, one man insisted that the women in his class had been taught ‘by humiliation’, so that only the thick-skinned remained (Andrew, age group 21–25). Despite such baptisms of fire, many men also recognized the women students’ achievements, phrased in somewhat over-compensatory praise: ‘The best students are female. They have better application than the males and they have it at an earlier stage’ (Simon, age group 36–40). Many acknowledged that there was a masculine culture in the profession ‘when it comes to dealing with men on site’ (Karl), or as one put it: ‘the building industry is in the “Dark Ages”’ (Murdo, age group 56+). ‘[S]ite visits [among so many builders, joiners and bricklayers] are very difficult for women’, remarked another, ‘they are supposed to know better than anyone else … it must be a bit intimidating or very intimidating for them’ (Paul, age group 41–45 ). We shall return to this point at the end. There were undoubtedly some respondents – particularly older men – who had sharply antagonistic attitudes to women architects. One man (Graeme, age group 36–40) proudly reported that he had never employed anyone with a child. Another felt that women lacked drive: To be an architect you have got to have a certain amount of aggression … You have got to be passionately dedicated to it, like your Norman Foster … [Women] work well as a team. They are not necessarily born leaders, not Boadiceas.

In contrast, a woman architect speaking of charisma, attributed it to Zaha Hadid as much as to Norman Foster (Cass, age group 31–35). We have found a strong belief that ‘things are changing’ (e.g. Michael, age group 46–50). It was almost a mantra that women were gradually gaining architectural equality, even reaching the very top. It was a ‘liberal profession’ (David, age group 56+). Some, such as Rob, in his forties, asserted that more than half were now women; an architectural teacher claimed there was parity

113


114

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 114

February 2004

amongst students (Gavin, age group 36–40). With one exception, male architects claimed that there was no structural problem in the profession: ‘The good ones are getting through … [although] women may have to work harder in the larger practices to show they are good at the job’ (Colin, age group 36–40). Why were women earning less than men? The most frequent answer for both sexes (28 or 39%) was that it was due to women having children. Many, especially women, resigned themselves to the conclusion that it was almost impossible to have a family life and be highly successful, because of long office hours, which excluded much domestic juggling between children and work. Indeed more men than women had worked 40 hours or over in the last week (35 or 88% m; 22 or 69% f). Ten men (25%) – but only 2 women (6%) – had worked over 60 hours – and twice as many men as women viewed working outside official working hours as essential. A major discrepancy emerged between the egalitarian rhetoric of architecture and its backstage realities. Some offered psychological explanations for women’s subordinate position in the profession, such as the view that women were weaker in 3D perception (Peter, age group 46–50, Murdo, age group 56+). Other male architects identified fitting jobs for women in the less spectacular arenas of design – in domestic architecture or interiors. This left the ‘meaty details and the foundations and the construction stuff’ to men (see, for example, Patrick, age group 41–45). Almost half the male sample thought that women themselves opted to specialize in this way: ‘[they] chose to do smaller scale domestic stuff. At college the girls in the year always seemed to want to do housing schemes, given the choice’ (Peter, age group 46–50). Another female architect was cited as having opted not to take her talents further or seek promotion: yet she was given the most difficult, large projects because she was best at them (Stephen, age group 46–50). What was the more humdrum material background to this? Only a third reported their firms were offering parental leave. Many men in fact disapproved of maternity leave, which they thought made women less attractive employees. One man’s accountant, having pointed out that his female staff were all in their early 30s, had commented ‘they are going to start costing you in maternity pay if they become pregnant’. In the male view, discrimination might be wrong, but it made better economic sense not to employ women. Questioned about architecture and parenting, women had greater realism about the mechanisms which affected their working achievements. Thirty men but only ten women had children (75% m., 31% f.). A third of the men, but only one woman, thought children made no difference to parents’ working life. In practical terms, although 3 of the men (8%) did ‘all’ or ‘more’ of the housework compared with their partners, over half the women did (17). Finally, a crucial difference emerged over the ‘doxa’ of child care: over half the men (but only two women) reaffirmed the orthodoxy that children suffered when not looked after by biological parents. Thus, traditional principles of vision and division of the world still persisted amidst movements of change (Bourdieu, 1996: 1).


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 115


The interviews also revealed how domestic life suffered the strains of architects’ workloads, with marriages splitting up under this pressure. Many men admitted to not pulling their weight in terms of household chores. In marriages where both were equally qualified as architects, men often invoked the biological essentialist argument that looking after children was both a woman’s choice and her natural responsibility. But essentialists or not, all the male architects agreed that the ‘pregnancy thing’ (Simon, age group 41–45) was the source of gender inequality: ‘It is the business of having children which gets in the way’ (Karl, age group 46–50). The women architects’ responses were marked by a blend of illusion and anticipatory loss. A sizeable fraction had been lured by educational equality of opportunity to believe that women were only disadvantaged in traditional settings. In some such cases, the veil of equal opportunity had been roughly torn down: pregnancy, especially, revealed the absence of adequate maternity provision. Despite these abrasive discoveries, few women acknowledged such inequalities consistently. Because gender inequalities are a probabilistic outcome rather than a universal one, and because there are other sources of social injustice which affect their male colleagues as well – such as the marked scarcity of clients – the women architects sampled usually found alternative explanations to offset their recognition of persistent gender inequalities.

The Turn-of-millennium ‘Spirit of Capitalism’ We would like, finally, to connect our discomforting interview findings about gender both to the reality of the greater market competitiveness of architecture since the 1960s and to the accompanying emergence of a new rhetoric of globalized production. We borrow here from Boltanski and Chiapello’s compelling analysis (1999) of a transformed work rhetoric, derived from their comparison of the ethical register of 1990s management texts of with those of the 1960s. The distinctive spirit of 1990s capitalism is founded on the creative character of its projects, coupled with an ethos of transnational nomadic mobility. It is rooted in a globalized, or ‘connectionist man’ [sic] and a ‘network society’. In the 1990s’ negative critique of earlier structures, earlier (1960s) Taylorist patterns of organization are dismissed as inauthentic and oppressive. In its positive ‘artistic’ mode, 1990s players are hailed as ‘intuitives’, ‘visionaries’ and ‘innovators’. Yet, veiled by this language of human expressivity, Boltanski and Chiapello also note that rates of profit have soared (1999: 19–21). In Durkheimian terms, unchecked individualist ‘egoism’ exists, intensified by the decline of Welfare State security floors and fragmentation of the labour market between permanents and casuals (1999: 503–4). The global mobility of the 1990s vision beckons, but it leaves many workers with dependants, including women, more precarious and unable to pursue its widened opportunities (1999: 323, 458–9).

115


116

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 116

February 2004

At first sight, architects might appear protected by their profession from such a ‘precarization’ of the habitus, under neo-liberal flexibility (Bourdieu: 1998). However, temporary collaboration has long been the rule for important architectural projects. ‘Globalization’ has deep architectural roots, prefigured with 1890s pan-European Art Nouveau, and extended with the 1920s Modern Movement or the ‘International Style’. The long-term threats of this internationalizing trend for the British architectural profession were also recognized early: heralded in the late 1960s, they were publicly acknowledged in the 1974 fees debate (Saint, 1983: 150). Well before the intensified pressures of the 1980s and the rise then of ‘architectentrepreneurs’, the ‘gentlemanly architect’ tradition was ‘at its fag-end’ (Saint, 1983: 117). Our contention is that these same conditions are particularly difficult for practitioners with young children. A recent study of architectural trends has shown that the setting of British architecture changed from 1962–91. Medium-sized (6–10) and very large firms (31–50 and over 50) declined, while large firms (11–30) rose slightly and small firms of 1–5 burgeoned. In 1991, small firms employed 74 percent of all architects as against 56 percent in 1962 (Symes, Eley and Seidel, 1995: 197).7 Its authors bore witness to their architectural respondents’ ‘harsh economic climate’ (Symes et al., 1995: viii, 11). They accounted for this via four interlocking changes: the end of the ban on advertising, the growth of specialization in architect design teams, the integration with the building industry and, most significant of all, the decline of architecture within public authorities. Six years later, median earnings for senior salaried architects in Britain stood at the modest level of £30,000 (in Scotland only £26,500) (RIBA, 2001: 6). Interestingly, fewer than 4 percent (25) of Symes et al.’s principal architects (607) were women and all of these were found in the younger age groups (1995: 193, 81).

Conclusion In light of this social reality, and our own evidence of the late 1990s, there are few grounds for the belief that women are on the verge of ‘making it’ in architecture. It is not that women lack the cultural capital to do well in the profession, for nobody has doubts about their ability at architectural school level. Rather, we suggest that where markets are less localized and clients less forthcoming, the room for tolerance and nurture of those with young children becomes reduced. More specifically, in a savagely competitive climate, contracts place a strong premium on instrumental rationality, not least in the use of power to insist on the time discipline of builders and others. The blending of these attributes are difficult enough for men, many of whom are strong on design but are reluctant to assume entrepreneurial power. Women are likely to be doubly threatened, unequipped as they are by a masculine training into authority (Bourdieu, 2001: 69). Indeed, recalling the interviewed women’s experiences of intimidation and their sense of the split responsibilities of par-


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 117


enthood, Bourdieu’s words about the force of the masculine ‘love of domination’ – libido dominandi – strike us as compelling. In turn, the female habitus revealed in our study shows a whole repertoire of strategies for resigned endurance, even from the most clear-sighted of Bourdieu’s ‘lucid outsider’ women (2001: 69, 78). In conclusion, we hope to have revealed how, in a field such as architecture, the profession may be rationalized to allow women’s entry while permitting men merely to regroup to retain their collective interests. We link this not just to the desire typically engendered in men to shine among other men, but also to the nature of the renewed market structures and their new ‘spirit of capitalism’. While liberating architectural ‘stars’ from parochial boundaries and deploying a rhetoric of flexibility or authenticity which might appear to favour women, the harsh economic climate has in fact undercut the conditions which are conducive to gender equality.

Notes 1

2

3 4 5

6 7

The independent UK regulating body superintending professional standards is the ARB (Architects’ Registration Board), which included 29,905 architects in 2000, of whom 3667 (12%) were women. Membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects is looser, requiring the passing only of one exam and two years’ practice. Hence the discrepancy in results. Bourdieu defines the State Nobility as an elite whose educational titles are guaranteed by the state and who are found in the top echelon of the public and private sectors (professions, politicians and business executives) (1996: 329). Contrast Walby (1997: 37). It should be noted, however, that women may be active design members of teams which are headed by male architects. The majority of practising architects are sole practitioners and principals of practices. The distinction between sole practitioner and principal is made on the basis that principals employ other architectural staff while sole practitioners either work alone or have only secretarial or administrative support. There are three levels in employment – principals, associates and salaried architects. All names are pseudonyms. The percentages are from a sample of 610 RIBA architects in the private sector. To be more specific, the firms of 11–30 rose modestly (5% to 8%), but there were declines in firms sized 6–10 (from 20% to 10%), 31–50 (3% to 2%) and over 50 (3% to 1%).

References Adams, A. and P. Tancred (2000) Designing Women. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Agrest, D. (2000) ‘Architecture from Without: Body, Logic and Sex’, in J. Rendell, B. Penner and I. Borden (eds) Gender Space Architecture, pp. 358–70. London: Routledge.

117


118

20/1/04

Sociology Volume 38

■

2:13 pm

Number 1

■

Page 118

February 2004

Ahrentzen, S. and K.H. Anthony (1993) ‘Sex, Stars and Studios’, Journal of Architectural Education 47(1): 11–29. Ahrentzen, S. and L.N. Groat (1992) ‘Rethinking Architectural Education: Patriarchal Conventions and Alternative Visions from the Perspective of Women Faculty’, Journal of Architectural Education 47(1): 95–111. Architects’ Registration Board (2003) URL (consulted September 2003): http://www.arb.org.uk Architecture Today (1993) Equal Opportunities, 40 (July): 63. Argyris, C. (1981) Architectural Educational Study, Vol 1: Teaching and Learning in Design Settings. New York: Mellon Foundation. Boltanski, L. and Chiapello, E. (1999) Le Nouvel Esprit de Capitalisme. Paris: Gallimard. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction. London: RKP. Bourdieu, P. (1990) ‘La Domination Masculine’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 84: 2–31. Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production. Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P. (1996) The State Nobility. Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P. (1998) Acts of Resistance. Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P. (2000) Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Bourdieu, P. (2001) Masculine Domination. Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P. et al. (1999) The Weight of the World. Cambridge: Polity. Boutelle, S.H. (1981) ‘Women’s Networks: Julia Morgan and Her Clients’, Making Room: Women in Architecture (Special Issue), Heresies 11 3(3): 91–4. Bussel, A. (1995) ‘Women in Architecture’, Progressive Architecture Nov: 45–9. Castells, M. (1997) The Information Age: The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Colomina, B. (1996) Privacy and Publicity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Coleman, D. (1996) ‘Introduction’, in D. Coleman, E. Danze and C. Henderson (eds) Architecture and Feminism. New York: Princeton University Press. Crompton, R. (1987) ‘Gender, Status and Professionalism’, Sociology 21: 413–28. Favro, D. (1996) ‘The Pen is Mightier than the Building’, in D. Agrest, P. Conway and L.K. Weisman (eds) The Sex of Architecture, pp. 295–308. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Lorenz, C. (1990) Women in Architecture. London: Trefoil. MacInnes, J. (1998) The End of Masculinity. Buckingham: Open University Press. Progressive Architecture (1994) A White Gentlemen’s Profession? LXXV(11): 55–61. RIBA (1994) ‘Opportunity Knocked’, Journal, June: 20–1. RIBA (2001) ‘Architects’ Employment and Earnings, 2000’, Journal, July: 1–12. Rothschild, J. and V. Rosner (1999) ‘Feminisms and Design: A Review Essay’, in J. Rothschild (ed.) Design and Feminism, pp. 7–33. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Saint, A. (1983) The Image of the Architect. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Scottish Executive (2000) Women and Men in the Professions in Scotland. Edinburgh: Central Research Unit. Stevens, G. (1995) ‘Struggle in the Studio: A Bourdivin Look at Architectural Pedagogy’, Journal of Architectural Education 49(2): 105–22. Symes, M., J. Eley and A.D. Seidel (1995) Architects and their Practices. London: Butterworth.


20/1/04

2:13 pm

Page 119

Women architects and their discontents Fowler & Wilson Thompson E.P. (1967) ‘Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, Past and Present 38: 56–97. Valian, V. (1998) Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Walby, S. (1997) Gender Transformations. London: Routledge. Walker, L. (1997) Drawing on Diversity: Women, Architecture and Practice. London: Heinz/RIBA. Weisman, L.K. (1999) ‘Re-designing Architectural Education’, in J. Rothschild (ed.) Design and Feminism, pp. 159–73. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Witz, A. (1992) Professions and Patriarchy. London: Routledge.

Bridget Fowler Is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. She specializes in the sociology of culture, with particular reference to art and literature. Her long-term interest has been in the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, whose theory she has taken up in two books, The Alienated Reader (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991) and Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory: Critical Investigations (Sage, 1997). She has also edited a further book of critical essays on Bourdieu, Reading Bourdieu on Society and Culture (Blackwell, 2000), and is at present engaged in writing a study of obituaries influenced, amongst other thinkers, by his work. Address: Department of Business and Management, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland. E-mail: [email protected]

Fiona Wilson Is currently Professor of Organizational Behaviour in the Department of Business and Management in the University of Glasgow. Her main research is on gender relations at work. She is currently researching romantic relationships at work, as well as banks’ lending to male and female business owners. She has two books appearing in second editions – Organizational Behaviour and Gender and Organizational Behaviour: A Critical Introduction. Recent journal articles include research on women and management in the professions, gender and appraisal, the culture of computing, and sexual harassment. Address: Department of Sociology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, Scotland. E-mail: [email protected]

119