Building Barriers: Images of Women in the RAIC Journal, 1924-73

Social History/Histoire Sociale, 2002

Architectural Theory Review, 1998

Architectural History Aotearoa

A number of moves in the seventies had meant that more women than ever before were in architecture schools and by the eighties they were flooding into the profession. Over the decade their numbers quadrupled (as measured by registration) as women moved from the exception to the norm. But their impact was variable. This paper will try to tease out that impact from women-only practices to support groups to what they published to moves away from the profession.

2000

2016

Architecture and Design History have long ignored the achievements of women professionals in architecture and design fields with the consequences that women have been denied their own place in History. Considering that, since the end of the nineteenth century, specialised magazines have covered works by creative women, it is surprising that their contribution has still not been completely acknowledged by mainstream histories or ‘seminal histories'. It is a fact, that the History of Contemporary Architecture and Design has too frequently favoured men professionals' works simply omitting to mention works by their women colleagues. Despina Stratigakos's book entitled "Where Are the Women Architects?" proves yet again that in 2016 this subject is far from being completed and it is still worthy of close attention. This essay considers gender studies in the fields of History of contemporary Architecture and Design critically tracing an international bibliography on t...

2021

Reference site: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Women-in-Architecture/Sokolina/p/book/9780367232344. Book preview (57 pages available): https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Routledge_Companion_to_Women_in_Arch/qhssEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover, https://routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780429278891. Recognition: Top Ten Titles published by Routledge featured at 2022 CAA Annual Conference: Sokolina, Anna, ed. The Routledge Companion to Women in Architecture (2021) https://caa.confex.com/caa/2022/meetingapp.cgi/Session/10840; and The Nomination for the SAH 2023 Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award Description: The Routledge Companion to Women in Architecture illuminates the names of pioneering women who over time continue to foster, shape, and build cultural, spiritual, and physical environments in diverse regions around the globe. It uncovers the remarkable evolution of women’s leadership, professional perspectives, craftsmanship, and scholarship in architecture from the preindustrial age to the present. The book is organized chronologically in five parts, outlining the stages of women’s expanding engagement, leadership, and contributions to architecture through the centuries. It contains twenty-nine chapters written by thirty-three recognized scholars committed to probing broader topographies across time and place and presenting portraits of practicing architects, leaders, teachers, writers, critics, and other kinds of professionals in the built environment. The intertwined research sets out debates, questions, and projects around women in architecture, stimulates broader studies and discussions in emerging areas, and becomes a catalyst for academic programs and future publications on the subject. The novelty of this volume is in presenting not only a collection of case studies but in broadening the discipline by advancing an incisive overview of the topic as a whole. It is an invaluable resource for architectural historians, academics, students, and professionals.

MoMoWo: Women Designers, Craftswomen, Architects and Engineers between 1918 and 1945, 2017

Four decades ago, Susana Torre addressed the lack of documentation and representation of women's design and built achievements in architectural histories. This article contributes to the current criticism of the lack of documentation of women's contributions to architectural histories. To evaluate the historical visibility of women since Torre's first addressed of the issue, this article provides a quantitative analysis of the documentation of women and their achievements in recent publications. The titles examined were 10 modern architecture history books, accompanied by an index, published or reprinted between 2004-2014 and available in Belgian university libraries. Only those available in at least three institutions were investigated, and those with multiple copies available were prioritised. The outcome of this research is twofold. Firstly, it demonstrates that modern architecture histories were composed of an averaging ratio of 19 men architects/designers to one woman architect/designer. Secondly, inspired by the three-question Bechdel test that evaluates women's representation in film, an architectural Bechdel test was introduced and put into practice to evaluate the representation of women's lives and achievements. Only four out of the ten books were shown to represent the lives and/or achievements of one woman architect in at least three pages.

The information of this paper was delivered at the Conference of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History [In Association with the Bulgarian Women’s History Group, the Bulgarian Association of University Women and Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”], Women, Gender and the Cultural Production of Knowledge, St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, 8-11 August 2007 Investigations on women architects from the 1980s until the present have pointed out worldwide pioneering figures, however, the analyses on their work are scarce. For the entire period between the two world wars, the number of architectural, urban and interior designs that Bulgarian women architects have worked on is over 200. Still, their names are rarely mentioned in publications on 20th century history of architecture and rather small part of their professional experience is familiar to the public. Numerous works and several sensational facts concerning the 20th century history of architecture in Bulgaria were discovered by a research project on the topic. This research underlines the necessity to popularize the pioneer women architects’ creativity in Bulgaria and worldwide through publications and exhibitions, and to introduce information about them into the architectural curriculum of universities. This will change the views on the 20th century development of architectural profession as well as of the Modern Movement culture in Bulgaria.

As an essential component of architectural education –the architectural review– requires students of architecture to perform regularly before their professors and peers. Feminist performance theory and the history of the representation of the female body can shed light on the lingering inequalities between men and women in architecture school.

This paper examines the recent status of Turkish women architects through the statistical data gathered from union of chamber of architects and schools of architecture. It also compares the figures of women architects in our country with selected countries from Europe as well as Canada, Australia and United States of America. Our study has demonstrated that despite of the fact that women are generally underrepresented in the all work force in Turkey, the condition of Turkish women architects display a considerably satisfactory level of representation in the profession, when compared with other countries. However, during the analysis it became also evident that the current statistical data in published and unpublished sources have various shortages and thus they are unable to provide a ground for more accurate evaluations. Based on this necessity, we would like to present our proposal for web based documentation and archiving of women architects in order to benefit from the fruitful milieu of the conference discussions. Our proposal for documentation is also reputable to other countries for further developments of this project. The fact that only a small percentage of the overall built environment is shaped by women architects clearly shows the existence of a gender-based crisis in the profession of architecture. Despite the growing number of female students in architectural education especially after the 1980s, male professionals are still shaping architectural practice. This dilemma has become a major area of interest for many scholars who have approached the problem from various viewpoints for the last twenty years. Even the proliferation in the number of books, articles and research reports on the issue of marginalization of women architects in the profession has not been able to change this situation yet (Graft, Greed, Manley, 2003). The patriarchal roots of the profession and its historical relations with craftsmanship are evidently one of the main reasons in the historically delayed entrance of women architects into the profession (Adams, Tancred 2000). The emphasis on the effect of the biological differences (Grosz E 2000) and/or socially constructed gender codes (Weismann 1994) is also another approach in current research, which focuses on the reasons for the marginalization of women architects. Some feminist theorists, on the other hand, have preferred to interpret the difference by acknowledging women's ways of knowing (Franck 2000). These viewpoints theorize the raison d'être of the secondary roles of women in the profession by criticizing the patriarchal hegemony in general. Despite the modest roles that women take in shaping the built environment, feminist criticism in the field of architecture has enabled recognition of the responsive approach of women architects for sustainability, diversity, and many other everyday matters, including innovative solutions for eliminating the dissatisfaction from standardized modern housing. Participation of women into the practice of architecture obviously can make a great contribution for equal representation in the workforce all over the world. Women are trying to resist against sexism in the economic arena for a long time. On the other hand, women' participation into architecture is not only vital for women architects, but also for many other people who are in demand of a better architectural service which would produce solutions for social problems such as poverty, homelessness, isolation, and extreme consumption of the sources all over the world. Typical male-centric view of architecture focused on the physical aspects and created a form-obsessed physical built environment. On the other hand, women architects do not take conventional star system embedded in the patriarchal roots of the profession into account. Instead, women architects generally prefer to contend with small commissions with a focus on family society issues such as housing and rehabilitation projects. Increasing the number of women in the discipline of architecture is one of the major concerns of national professional organizations in the new millennium. Action plans that were prepared after comprehensive researches include recommendations to educational institutions, professional organizations, employers and practices. The general points taken from a sample report is quoted below: Recommendations to educational institutions included these key points: