Created in 1857, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is the primary professional organization for architects in the United States, the stated purpose of which was and is “to unite in fellowship all members of the architectural profession.” Perhaps it goes without saying that at the time it was established it was presumed that all such members would be (white) men. Louise Bethune, the first woman to become a member of the Institute was admitted in 1888, more than thirty years after its founding. The Institute exercises social control over public perception of architecture, professional and hiring standards, and opportunities for its membership.
Nearly a century after Bethune’s admission to the AIA, the organization’s inclusion of women hadn’t progressed much, which was symptomatic of both the institutional culture and the architectural profession writ large. In 1973, a resolution was proposed and adopted at the National AIA Convention in San Francisco that the organization should “take action to integrate women into all aspects of the profession as full participants” and conduct an inquiry into “the status of women in the profession” to be reported on at the 1974 Convention (Edelman 1989, 118). The 1973 resolution was a product of the liberatory rights movements of the 1960s and, consequently, of several years of women becoming increasingly vocal about their second-class status as architects.
As Judith Edelman notes in her essay “Task Force On Women: The AIA Responds to a Growing Presence,” published in the edited volume Architecture: A Place for Women, most women architects in the 1960s and 1970s found professional support outside of the American Institute of Architects. Women had either developed their own informal professional networks or taken the initiative to form their own official local or regional coalitions, associations, or organizations. Ellen Perry Berkeley, editor of the above-mentioned volume and co-creator of the New York-based group Alliance for Women in Architecture (AWA), contributed an influential article to this groundswell of advocacy (Merrett 2018). Berkeley’s piece “Women in Architecture,” appearing in the 1972 issue of Architectural Forum, presented a cogent case for institutional change. Her article begins with the Institute’s refusal to acknowledge that it bears any responsibility for discrimination against women members and, by extension, practitioners:
True or false: The architectural profession, in a kind of ‘gentlemen’s agreement,’ gives its women unequal pay, unequal responsibility, unequal opportunity, unequal recognition, and unequal respect as serious professionals.
False, say the official spokesmen. ‘Some of my best friends are women architects,’ jokes James A. Scheeler, Deputy Executive Vice President of the AIA. More seriously he says, ‘I’ve heard consistently there should be more women in the profession. But I’m not aware of our schools discouraging women: I’d like to see some facts.’ He defines a ‘positive program’ as getting more women ‘into the pipeline,’ and a negative program as raising the subject of discrimination ‘without hard data.’ (Berkeley 1972, 46)
In the article, Berkeley cites what “studies” exist: the AIA’s estimate (according to a survey of its membership conducted in 1971, women comprised roughly 1.2% of its members (233 women in 1969, a number estimated to have grown to between 250 and 300 by 1971)) and refers to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which estimated that women composed around 4% of registered architects in the United States. She gives other comparative statistics (wages, school admissions) based on the best information available at the time, but notes a frustrating lack of reliable or systematic data. She does however systematically dismantle Scheeler’s claim that architecture’s “woman problem” is purely a pipeline problem. Implied, but never explicitly stated, is that his request for concrete “hard data” is an ignorant dismissal masquerading as reasonableness.
The AIA Task Force (first a sub-committee) on Women addressed this data vacuum by undertaking the most comprehensive survey of the status of women in architecture to date. To return to the group’s formation, Judith Edelman writes of her misgivings when she was asked, pursuant to the AIA’s 1973 resolution, to chair a subcommittee of the Personnel Practices Committee: “I was taken aback… that the entire subject was relegated to a minor arm of a committee dealing with many other issues. We had supposed that an independent committee or task force would be the appropriate entity” (Edelman 1989, 119). She accepted the position, however, and began working to survey women across the profession, even as her sub-committee suffered several setbacks, whether from incompetence or intentional obstruction from other AIA members remains uncertain.
The lion’s share of the documentation we hold in the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA) on the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Task Force on Women and the Commission’s efforts to “integrate women into the profession and the AIA” from the early-to-mid-1970s can be found among Edelman‘s papers, while a few cross-references exist in other IAWA collections, including Natalie de Blois‘, Marie Laleyan’s, and Jean Linden Young‘s, all of whom were members of the commission (Patricia Schiffelbein and Joan Sprague, whose papers are held at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library, were also members of the commission at various points).
In 1974 Edelman requested a status change to an independent task force and Marie Laleyan became her co-chair. The outcome of their work was an Affirmative Action Plan (AAP) delivered to the AIA Board of Directors in December 1975 that included their original report on the status of women in the profession, and their specific recommendations to address the major inequities laid out in said report. The plan outlined specific goals, actions, and tools; it provided guidance on future representation of women and inclusive language for professional literature; it gave precise details on compliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972) and advised the AIA to create standard guides on “lawful employment practices” to distribute to members upon request; it recommended scholarships and early education interventions to recruit young women into the profession; and it provided benchmark statistics to annually evaluate implementation of the AAP. By all accounts, it was an intentionally actionable document with built-in means for its future assessment and adjustment. As stated in the final plan:
The Affirmative Action concept has been developed over the past ten years as a tool to correct the results of past and present discrimination. Experience has shown, however, that for an affirmative action effort to be effective, it must be directed by a set of specific procedures… [It] is a results-oriented, open-ended plan of action. It requires the analysis of existing conditions, setting of goals and timetables, and development of programs and a set of implementation and record-keeping procedures. (v, AAP/AIA, Edelman, Box 1, Folder 12)
In Edelman’s candid postmortem, she writes, “In spite of the odds against us, we had produced a very thorough document with great potential for accelerating improvement in the status of women architects. And nothing much happened.” (1989, 122) She goes on to reflect that, while the AIA did nothing with the plan, the work went on to have a life beyond its institutional charge. She focuses on the report’s value as the first systematic attempt to measure and analyze the demographic makeup of the profession, the primary causes of unbalanced gender representation, and the endemic and active discriminatory practices (in hiring, promotion, salary, etc.) deployed against licensed women architects.
On the one hand, it’s an old story–institutions being conservative and resistant to change, well-intentioned (but toothless) reports being ignored. But I think Edelman was right–for those who want to carry on the work, the AAP provides a snapshot of the profession at a point in time and it clearly articulates women practitioners’ grievances (as pulled from surveys). Looked at this way, the report’s lack of effect proved its charge correct and underscored the need for institutional change. And in fact it came to embody a feminist critique of intractable organizational politics. A full copy of the report with its appendices and recommendations is available in Special Collections and University Archives or can be found online here. For supporting documentation, please see the Judith Edelman Architectural Papers.
References:
Box 1, Folder 12, Judith Edelman Architectural Papers, Ms1997-010, Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va. https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=oai/VT/repositories_2_resources_2044.xml.
Berkeley, Ellen Perry. “Women in Architecture.” The Architectural Forum, vol. 137, no. 2, September 1972. https://usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1972-09.pdf. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
McQuaid, Matilda, and Ellen Perry Berkeley. Architecture : A Place for Women. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
———-Edelman, Judith. “Task Force On Women: The AIA Responds to a Growing Presence.” Architecture : A Place for Women. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
Merrett, Andrea. “Ellen Perry Berkeley.” Now What?!, Architexx, 24 May 2018. https://www.nowwhat-architexx.org/articles/2018/5/24/ellen-perry-berkeley. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
