The architecture profession has become complacent about sexism, a leading female architect claims. The profession is resting on its laurels as overt sexism has virtually disappeared, Beverly Garlick, a sole practitioner and lecturer at Sydney University, said.

There are still very few women as directors in commercial practices and the issue is self-perpetuating, Garlick said. 

“Ten years ago you had to help women get along but now people assume you’ve got there and they don’t have to think.”

Practices need to be more flexible in their approach to working hours for women with family commitments, Garlick said. She added that a recession could force the industry to accept job sharing, part-time working and flexible hours as viable ways of working. 

The industry has so far been resistant to part time and flexible working hours, she said. “A lot of other professions can work three or four days, but it’s very hard in architecture. It’s been hard getting commercial practices to accept this.”

Paula Whitman’s 2005 study Going Places: The Career Progression of Women in the Architectural Profession is the most recent study in gender equality within the architecture profession. It found that the most nominated career goal among Australian female architects is to grow their own practice. But to be successful, Garlick said, sole practitioners need sufficient industry contacts.

“You need a whole cohort of other people you can link up with in architecture to do things,” Garlick said. “For me, as a single practitioner, to do larger work and a greater variety of work, I needed two or three partners.”

Twenty-three per cent of the Australian Institute of Architects’ (AIA) members are female, according to new figures.

Meanwhile, the Annual Business and Professions Study (ABPS) shows that women are underrepresented in related industries as well, making up just 16 per cent of the building and construction industry and 29.1 per cent of property and related services.

Across the professions women are underrepresented at high levels, making up just 15.4 per cent of CEOs and MDs and 19.2 per cent of board members, according to the study.

And the recession is just adding insult to injury for female architects in the UK. Figures show that while women make up 14 per cent of architects in the UK, they make up 25 per cent of those who have recently started claiming jobseeker’s allowance. The disproportionately large number of women joining the dole queue has sparked alarm at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), which labelled the figures “shocking” and “very sobering”. 

British architect Vanessa Bizzell runs a small Sheffield-based practice and has a 19-month old son. Having worked in a high-end commercial practice in central London and a medium-sized practice in Sheffield, Bizzell told Architecture & Design that the lack of women in the British profession is concerning. 

“I can’t see how our spaces will ever be more inclusive if we are shutting out half of the population from the profession,” she said. 

While the construction industry in general is still “a man’s world”, Bizzell said that many architects are unnecessarily concerned about how women fare dealing with contractors, particularly in site meetings.  

“I’ve been asked interview questions about how I will cope being a women on a construction site, which seems to be fairly inappropriate ... Actually, some of the contractors and engineers that I’ve worked with have stated a preference for a more gender-balanced design team on site as they felt that it contributed towards a less confrontational atmosphere when solving problems,” she said

Bizzell found that, despite consistently positive appraisals and being told she was on track to join the management team, the attitude changed once she had a child.

“It was made very clear that the company was deeply unhappy about part-time staff managing projects or retaining any role in business development. I had to fight very hard to justify my case and had several meetings after my return to discuss how concerned I was at being given ‘bitty’ roles on projects.  

However, Bizzell said that, in the Sheffield practice at least, there was no particular bias against female architects per se but a bias against being a female parent and flexible or part-time working.  

Flexible working can be difficult to achieve, she said, but is “critical” to enabling more women to work at higher levels in architecture. Most of Bizzell’s clients are unaware that she works part time. 

“If they call and I’m unavailable for an hour or two, I could just as easily be in another meeting as singing nursery rhymes in a church hall.”

“As I expand my business it will stay flexible,” she said. “I don’t believe that all staff need to be in the office at the same time and architects are meant to be adaptable problem solvers and designers so we should be at the forefront of flexible working practices not grumbling away at the rear.”