Women are the majority of the workforce in the United States, but they comprise only a quarter of its 208,000 registered architects. Unequal pay and lack of recognition have historically challenged women in our ranks. Even recent gains—women now hold one-third of the deanships at NAAB-accredited schools—are symbolic at this juncture. Real structural change must guide the agenda to wrest architecture, its practice, and its academy from outmoded hierarchies.
On the policy front, forward thinkers outside architecture say a more comprehensive national investment in child care prior to kindergarten will help bring about systemic change. If we can entrust our children to qualified caretakers as young as 5 months, just as we entrust them to certified educators as late as 5 years old—funded by tax dollars, employer subsidies, and other financing mechanisms—we might just see a more balanced workplace in architecture. We might just achieve the plurality that drives equity, diversity of thought, innovation, and competitive talent. At press time, it appears as if the Biden administration might succeed in deploying a Child Care Development Block Grant to help women return to the workforce, a stabilization fund for providers to stay open, and a boost to child care tax credits for working parents. As our feature story this month mentions, the pandemic has posed a particular challenge for professional women, forcing tough choices and, in many cases, threatening hard-won career advancement. As we look forward, we must recognize that greater equity benefits everyone.
Within architecture, a progressive perspective places child care in a broader constellation of solutions, including mentorship and modified promotion practices that could make the workplace more equitable. The AIA Guides for Equitable Practice point to allies, coaches, mentors, and sponsors as the elements of a network that have proven to benefit employees and employers. Among protégés who activate this network, 65% are likely to find satisfaction in their advancement, and 57% less likely than their unsponsored peers to leave their current employer within one year. Beyond mentorship and sponsorship, the guides cover a range of topics from compensation to negotiation to recruitment and retention, and they should be required reading for anyone who draws a paycheck—or signs one. Once and for all, we must clamp down on the abuse of the unpaid internship, not to mention the foolish romance we have with the all-nighter. Let’s start in the academy with that one (or remunerate with credit hours to compensate student’s commitment rather than perpetuate the concept that free labor is all right. It’s not). Where is the evidence that this makes better architects or architecture?
Some also say advocating for a higher percentage of guaranteed remote work is another advantage given the flexibility it offers. COVID-19, of course, might very well take care of this last point, as the business advantages to remote work have been revealed to employers and chronicled in the media. Nevertheless, the promise of remote work raises the question of how we should define economic productivity for employers in light of our daily commitments to ourselves and our families. Peggy Deamer, professor emerita of architecture at Yale, has raised an even larger question: how architects can begin to acknowledge what has been called their own “precarity as laborers.” Employment, after all, depends on mutual agreement. If we can improve the agreement, we can improve the circumstances of employment.
