No other profession can make the proverbial male measuring contest more visual and dramatic than architecture. Whether it is about being the tallest, most lavish, most modernist, most minimalist, most post-modernist, or most deconstructed, too many, but not all, of history’s celebrated architects come across like a bunch of juvenile boys standing on a stream bank trying to project their urine further than the next. Even with noble ambitions, their narcissistic “fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love,” have often put them out of touch with the plight of their fellow human beings. I will offer a simple and very unoriginal solution to this problem; hire more female architects.
As of 2005, nearly 80% of US architects were male. That dominance seems to be waning, as 90% of architects over 55 were male, while fewer than 70% under 35 were male. However, the economic downturn might have slightly reversed that trend. At least that is the case in Britain where the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) found a 7% decrease of female representation in architecture firms between January 2009 and December 2011 (28% to 21%). This imbalance can be worrisome for many reasons, but I will focus on the possibility that it hinders the profession’s ability to be relevant to the general public’s needs.
Studies from psychology and neuroscience find that women, on average, tend to be more empathetic, sympathetic and less prone to narcissistic traits than their male counter parts. They are less likely to get caught up in struggles over dominance and ego that lead to visions of grandiosity. For these reasons, Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature argues that the world would be a much more peaceful place if more women were in charge. Piggy backing on this idea, I argue that architecture would be far a more relevant and justifiable enterprise if there were more female architects. Beyond making the profession more compassionate, a greater number of female architects would be a stalwart force against pernicious ideologies that dismiss common concerns for the idealized tomorrow.
