I'm a bit blurry from the glass of wine on an empty stomach, a bit distracted by the power of the heater blasting at my feet and a bit tired. What do I think? I was inspired, fired up, relieved, excited until the Q & A session at the end was cut off after one question and we were ushered out of the hall.
"How wonderful to see so many women architects" murmured Angela Brady, RIBA President as she climbed the stairs in front of me.
"Well, we were just saying it's a shame we couldn't have more of a debate at the end," I said.
"You can talk to the panellists individually over wine," she countered and imperceptibly increased her speed, dissolving into the throng ahead.
Eve and I scanned the cluster of women at the top of the stairs for either the speakers or the wine but saw neither. In the end we managed to snatch a few minutes with Kathryn Firth of the Olympics Legacy Company and Liza Fior of muf architecture/art before they were whisked off for dinner. I couldn't bring myself to linger at the edge of the dining room and try and stimulate the missing debate with my fellow lingerers whilst the panelists, president and AJ editor got to have their exclusive follow-up chat at the table a few feet away. Dare I say it? So RIBA. It couldn't be this sort of attitude that is putting women off architecture, could it?
Grumble over. Individually each woman was utterly inspiring. Following on from the AJ's January woman-centric issue which aimed to highlight role models of successful women as well as expose the sad state of gender balance in the profession, inspiration turned out to be the main aim of the evening. It really was a new experience to listen to a woman talk about her, very impressive, architecture. I found myself identifying with their stories of 'being an outsider' of being 'bolshy'. They spoke of careers as syncopation not a crescendo, of collaboration, joy in the small as well as the big, of working within society rather than making objects. They were open and frank and unfailingly modest. Christine Murray, the AJ Editor, started the (brief) discussion at the end of a presentations with a question about this modesty. Was this a female trait? Could this have something to do with how few women reach the top of this profession? The reply was to point out there were modest men too. Hmm.
This, I think, is one of the problems for women in any male dominated profession. We don't want to be seen to be different. We don't want special favours or special acknowledgement. When we do well we are not doing any better than our male colleagues who also do well. Yet these women had been brought before us in the context of 'a year of debate about the role of women in architecture' because they are special- the statistics show it and we wanted to talk about it. Second problem - no one wants to generalise, particularly not about anything that might be labelled as 'female' or 'male' types of behaviour or characteristics. The trouble is, by immediately diverting the conversation away from their 'femaleness', these women became just as distant to me as 5 successful men.
We will never know whether the discussion would have addressed what female power is in architecture. I thought they each illustrated some brilliant examples and I will be brave and spell them out in Part 2 of this blog. Meanwhile I will leave you with my unasked and unanswered questions:
- Do the 60% of women architect students who don't become qualified architects just take the wrong subject at university?
- Does the fall in % really represent women leaving the architecture / building profession or is it about not becoming registered architects? If so - is that really a problem?
- Why do you think women leave?
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