The number of black women architects
has quadrupled in 15 years. But four times a fraction of a
percent doesn't amount to much.
First, the good
news: The number of black women licensed to practice
architecture in the United States has quadrupled over the
past 15 years.
The bad news? That
number is still only 196.
“I am not ready to
celebrate,” says Kathryn Tyler Prigmore, 51, who was among
the first 20 black women to be licensed. “Ten years ago, I
think everyone thought the number of minorities and women in
the profession would be significantly higher than it is
now.”
Black women
represent only 0.2 percent of a total population of
approximately 91,000 licensed architects. In law, black
women account for close to 2 percent of the profession; in
medicine, the figure is 4 percent.
None of the major
architectural organizations tracks the number of black
architects, or black women architects, gaining licensure.
But since 1991, architecture professors Bradford Grant and
Dennis Mann have maintained their own comprehensive
database, the Directory of African American Architects
(accessible online at blackarch.uc.edu). The first directory
listed 44 women; last month, Grant and Mann added Adrienne
M. Horton of New Mexico and LeAnn Elder Branzell of Florida.
“It's depressing in
the 21st century, in a time when we speak so freely of
diversity, that [the profession] is still obviously
exclusive,” says Kelly Powell, 33, whom Grant and Mann added
to the directory in January. Powell is a senior
architect/project manager with Davis Brody Bond Aedas in New
York.
Forecasters predict
that the number of black women in architecture will continue
to climb steeply. More black women are enrolling in
architecture schools; they represent as much as 4 percent of
the graduating population, according to the National
Architectural Accrediting Board.
Yet an uptick in
black women studying architecture doesn't necessarily
translate to architectural practice. In a field where
graduates regularly strike out on unexpected paths, women
and minorities seem more likely than most to forego
licensure and choose alternate careers.
There aren't hard
numbers on the rate of attrition, given a scarcity of
demographic data (although several architectural groups are
now working together to gather information, says Theodore
Landsmark, president of the Association of Collegiate
Schools of Architecture). But anecdotal evidence suggests
that the high cost of architectural education, a lack of
role models, and an inflexible model of success—which
rewards long hours and ignores community-based design—are
all factors in keeping American architecture less than fully
diverse.
Different Priorities
Why has
diversification stalled? It may have to do with women
architects having different priorities. “One theory is that
[women] choose paths that are not traditional practitioner
paths,” says Allison Williams, 55, a principal in the San
Francisco office of Perkins+Will who became licensed in
1980.
This theory is
bolstered by the results of a study in Australia, where
women make up 43 percent of architecture students but less
than 1 percent of firm directors. In 2005, the Royal
Australian Institute of Architects surveyed 550 female
members and concluded that they had different goals than
their male counterparts. For example, women tend to reject
the scale of a project, practice size, awards, and journal
coverage as measures of their personal success. For women,
the most meaningful measures of career progression often are
client satisfaction and personal satisfaction—in the form of
taking on new challenges and finding a balance in their
lives.
In keeping with the
results of the Australian study, many American black women
architects say they find satisfaction in socially
responsible design. Renetta Moss, 50, a county government
architect in Houston who was added to the directory this
January, says simply, “I don't aspire to be a great
architect. I aspire to use my architectural knowledge and
skills to do great things for society.”
Another reason that
women architects—of all races—diverge from the traditional
career path is because of the profession's imbalance between
life and work. “In a culture of all-nighters, where does a
mother fit in?” asks Raye McDavid, 36, who became licensed
and gave birth to her son in the same month last year. “We
are still, obviously, at a disadvantage because we can't put
in the types of hours our male colleagues can,” she says,
suggesting that digital technology should allow for more
flexibility.
McDavid says she
sometimes feels that she needs to work harder to get the
same recognition that male colleagues do. “I make a
statement and get no reaction,” she says. “My colleague says
the same thing, and it's a revelation.” McDavid is currently
setting up her own practice, RAM Architecture.
Add together the
quality-of-life costs with the dollars-and-cents expense of
schooling and interning, and what an architect earns cannot
match the paycheck of an attorney or physician—a drawback
for all prospective architects, and especially those coming
from low-income backgrounds.
Yamani Hernandez,
29, graduated last spring with a master's degree in
architecture from the University of Washington. She
complains about the low rewards of the profession on her
blog.strangebungalow.blogspot.com. “The education,
internship and licensure process in general is long as
hell,” she writes. “And the resulting salaries are crazy low
compared to the other professions.” For many people of
color, she says, choosing a career path doesn't allow “the
privilege of doing something you love.”
Hernandez decries
what she calls “the atrocious under-representation of people
of color in the profession.” She now works for Chicago
Public Schools, managing architecture and construction
programs for high school students.
Kemba Mazloomian graduated from the
University of Michigan in 1997 with a
master's degree in architecture and now
works as an editor in Chicago. “I worked
in office after office where my white
male co-workers, and even the clients we
worked for, questioned my competence,
rechecked my calculations, [and]
dismissed my relevance on projects,” she
recalls in an e-mail. Her colleagues,
Mazloomian says, “engaged in such a
systemic campaign of emotional sabotage,
that I invariably would seek work at
another office—only to find that the
office had changed but the dynamic
remained the same.”
Prigmore, a project manager at HDR
Architecture in Alexandria, Va., still
has moments when she feels marginalized.
At last year's American Institute of
Architects (AIA) convention in Los
Angeles, she remembers, “I asked one of
the booth attendants for information on
where to get my registration packet.
Without asking any questions, she
immediately directed me toward the
exhibitors' registration booth.”
Prigmore was redirected back to the same
area and returned to the booth she had
visited. The attendant “was pretty
embarrassed to find out I was both a
speaker and a fellow,” she says.
In a career spanning more than 35 years,
Sharon Sutton, 65, who teaches
architecture at the University of
Washington, has encountered setbacks she
blames on institutional resistance to
diversity. “I got a Ph.D. [in
psychology, in 1982] because I figured
if I was overqualified, I would be able
to take a leadership position,” she
explains. “I haven't. Forget being
director or dean of a school. I've begun
saying, ‘The boys ain't ready. They just
ain't ready.'”
Not everyone agrees that black women
architects are at a disadvantage. “I can
remember moments when I definitely felt
it wasn't a level playing field,” says
Williams. “But in a really competitive
arena, which is the only arena I've
worked in, for the most part [the
playing field] tilted in my favor as
many times as it tilted against my
favor. … It really does have to do with
being proud of who you are and
comfortable in your skin.”
Framing the Future
Whatever their experiences, when black
women such as Hernandez and Mazloomian
decide not to pursue licensure, the
future of the profession as a whole is
at risk, according to a
little-publicized 2005 AIA report,
“Demographic Diversity Audit,” which was
prepared—reportedly at a cost of more
than $250,000—by Holland & Knight, an
independent team of researchers.
In surveys, interviews, and focus groups
conducted by the researchers, 11,500
participants “overwhelmingly endorsed
the concept that diversity is of
critical concern to the future of the
architecture profession,” according to
the final report.
Theodore Landsmark chaired the AIA
Diversity Committee when it commissioned
the study. He warns, “The consequence of
not [diversifying] is that the
profession will occupy a diminished
niche within the larger built
environment and come to be seen to be
providing services only to corporate and
wealthy individuals, rather than the
much wider range of people who are
affected by good architecture.”
To recruit more minority students,
architecture schools are targeting high
schoolers who have been exposed to the
field through construction or design,
Landsmark says. “Rather than do the kind
of scattershot recruiting that has
tended to occur, it makes more sense to
set up a table in The Home Depot in a
community of color,” he says.
Meanwhile, architecture programs are
trying to diversify their faculties and
curriculums. At the University of
Michigan's Taubman College of
Architecture and Planning, for example,
new course offerings include “Social
Change and the Architect” and “Gender in
Architecture,” and the school recently
hired June Manning Thomas, an urban
planner who is black and lectures on
race, ethnicity, and gender. (She also
happens to be Mazloomian's mother.)
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