Author in the News: Gwendolyn Wright and USA
Gwendolyn Wright's keynote lecture at the "Women and Modernism" colloquium at the Museum of Modern Art was featured in the October 31st New York Times column by architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. Using the colloquium and Wright's comments as a launching point, Oursoussoff considers the reasons why females continue to be underpresented in the architecture profession:
In an interview after the colloquium, Ms. Wright described it as a pattern of advance and retreat. "The two major feminist movements in American history—the 1910s and the late '60s and early '70s—obviously opened a lot of opportunities for women," she said. "But in both cases they were also followed by a backlash, and the numbers drop again. When male authority is under threat, for example, or there's an economic downturn, women lose their jobs first." . . .Women make up roughly half of all students in American graduate schools of architecture. Yet according to the American Institute of Architects, the professional association for practitioners, women accounted for only 13.3 percent of its members last year, an improvement from 1.2 percent in 1975 but a depressing figure nonetheless. And the number who have entered the ranks of international stars is minuscule.
One reason is the sexism that women encounter day to day in almost any profession. And any schoolgirl will tell you that the balance between work and family life is still skewed in favor of men. But the rarefied and strangely macho precincts of architecture can be particularly treacherous.
Read the full New York Times article
Learn more about Gwendolyn Wright's USA: Modern Architectures in History