Women in Architecture: a brief history
Kate Macintosh at Dawson’s Heights. Photo Michael Franke
Architect Kate Macintosh is probably most famous for her first project, designed before she was 30: Dawson’s Heights, a vast housing ziggurat that towers over south-east London. Kate’s subsequent career includes Grade II listed Macintosh Court (the subject of a long running Docomomo UK campaign), Solent Infants School in Hampshire, and Weston Adventure Playground in Southampton.
Kate has also been a key figure in the fight for women’s rights within the institutions of British architecture, being the first chair of RIBA’s Women’s Architects Group. Here she gives a short history of that struggle.
My base line for this brief history is the publication in 1792 of Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”.
The Reform bill of 1867 extended voting rights to urban men who paid rates. Women were excluded together with lunatics, criminals and casual workers of no fixed address. The obvious injustice of this discrimination against women stimulated the long campaign to correct this legislation.
Though women started entering the professions before voting rights were granted, it was rather on a grace-and-favour basis, which was supported by the broad movement for equal rights.
Ethel Charles became the first woman accepted to RIBA membership in 1898, not without some protests. It was put to a vote in council which split 51 in favour to 16 against. In 1902 she appealed to the Architectural Association to admit women onto their training courses, but they remained closed to women students for a further 15 years. Though school records on the date of admission of women across the country are incomplete it seems that Scotland was more advanced, Glasgow admitted women around 1905, Manchester 1909. Aberdeen records the graduation of Edith Burnet in 1914.
In 1931 Elizabeth Scott won the competition for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford on Avon, completed 1932 This was the first major public building in UK to be commissioned from a woman.
Comparative timeline of women in architecture: UK, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and New Zealand.
Seen in this broad historical sweep, the accelerating progress during the 60 years of my experience is remarkable. Though, as you see from my chart, Britain was not in the forefront of the fight for equality and autonomy, lagging some way behind the Scandinavian countries.
Finland granted women’s suffrage in 1906 and the first woman architect, officially trained and accepted into the profession was Signe Hornborg, graduating in 1890.
4 years after Finland, the first Norwegian woman architect was Lilla Hansen.
In Sweden, Agnes Magnell was the first woman accepted to train for architecture. Though she was not allowed to graduate, she was accepted as an “exception”. Magnell designed the water tower in Sala in 1903.
Women of my generation and later must feel gratitude to these early amazons, who needed such courage and determination.
My belief is that better conditions for women to thrive and make their contribution are integral to an overall respect for the potential & dignity of all groups, the young, the old, those with disabilities, and racial minorities. It is no accident that in Britain many of the early campaigners for women’s rights had fought for the abolition of slavery.
Such liberal, tolerant attitudes are most developed in the Scandinavian countries, where the extremes of wealth and poverty which increasingly scar British society are controlled by a just and transparent taxation system.
The book Spirit Level, (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010) which charts the income differentials within all democracies, conclude that as inequality increases so does social malfunction. Surprisingly disbenefits are experienced not only by the poor but also the rich in terms of mental and emotional ill health. There is a chart showing women’s status declines with increased income inequality. All the Scandiavian countries are well rated. Only the US and Portugal are worse than the UK on income inequality.
In 1978 Public Services Agency/RIBA published a joint report on the position of women in the architectural profession. This showed that the proportion of women was tiny and increasing at a glacial pace.
Rosemary Stjernstedt was recruited as one of the first group leaders in the LCC Housing Division when it was established in 1950. Her first project there was the Alton East estate, in Roehampton. She is seen here with (from left) Michael Powell, Colin Lucas, and H.G. Gillett.
The Public Sector was shown to be a good place for women to rise in their profession and escape discrimination. The London County Council was the first employer in the country after WW2 to ditch its ban on the employment of married women. In 1952 the LCC, which had the largest architects’ office in the world, pioneered equal pay for equal work, much before other employers. When the LCC Housing Division was formed in 1950, Rosemary Stjernstedt became the first woman team leader. She was the main designer of Alton East, the first phase of the Roehampton housing estate.
The public sector in UK initiated paid maternity leave before it became a legal requirement under EU regulations.
In 1980 the RIBA set up its own monitoring Group, the Women’s Architects Group, which I chaired. This reported in 1985 showing that we were (contrary to our self-image) lagging way behind other professions, such as law & medicine, in attracting & retaining female talent. We were then 6.1% women, compared with 24.7% for doctors, 15% solicitors.
As a result of work by our group with strong support from feminists on the staff of the RIBA, all sexist language and illustrations were expunged from the Institute’s literature. Activities of the group included the first exhibition of the work of British women architects, held at the RIBA in 1984, the year we celebrated the 150th birthday of the Institute. We ran returners courses for women who had taken a career break, to bring them up to speed on recently introduced building codes and changes in planning-law. These were very popular and always over-subscribed.
From left: Lynne Walker, Rosemary Stjernstedt, Pat Tindale, Jane Drew, Elaine Denby when they came to talk to women students at RIBA in 1986. At this meeting, Stjernstedt recounted that on graduating, she had worked for half the salary of male colleagues.
In 1986 we held a meeting at RIBA, aimed at women students when 4 pioneering, high-profile women architects presented their work & talked about their careers. These included Rose Stjernstedt and Jane Drew. Rose recounted that on graduating, she had worked for half the salary of male colleagues. This event was well reported in the press.
The group nominated Jane Drew for the Royal Gold medal at a time when no woman had received this award. In this we were unsuccessful but it was probably in consequence of this campaign that the RIBA nominated her for the honours’ list & she did became a Dame in 1996.
The following year the RIBA mounted a further exhibition “Drawing on Diversity” exhibiting collectable drawings by women architects.
You might suppose that having had 3 women presidents of the RIBA, that all is light and sunshine in the UK garden of gender equality in architecture. We have progressed a long way since the RIBA Women Architects’ Group was set up in 1980. Then we were only 7%, having increased roughly 3% in 20 years. But in 2019 women made up 29% of registered architects. Perhaps more importantly a 2018, an RIBA survey showed that the proportion of women partners, directors and sole principals has increased from 16% to 19%. It is reported that many, if not most practices, see having women at senior levels in their management as improving their job-getting potential. While overall 71% of those on the Architects Register at the end of 2019 were male and 29% female, the gender split for architects under 30 was exactly 50/50. That 21% drop-out cannot be accounted for by women using their skills in other sectors.
One of the factors in play here must be that the cost of childcare in UK, at 40.9% of average income, is one of the highest in the world. That plus poor provision for paid paternity leave. In Sweden and Norway, where the gender split amongst practicing architects is 50/50, the cost of childcare is 7.1% and 16.7% of average income respectively.