“Nothing Else Will Do”: The Call for Gender Equality in Architecture in Britain

Abstract

In early 2005, the British architectural weekly newspaper, Building Design, launched a campaign to increase the proportion of women in the profession of architecture in the UK from its then-current “shameful” 14 per cent. A year earlier, sociologists Bridget Fowler and Fiona M. Wilson had published “Women Architects and Their Discontents”, an article that, drawing on interviews with architects, illuminated the difficulties of achieving gender equality in architecture. In light of Fowler and Wilson's work, this paper considers the Building Design campaign and the improved working conditions it advocates to make the architectural workplace more conducive to the inclusion and retention of women. Arguing that it is overly hopeful to expect pragmatic workplace reforms to bring about full gender equality, this paper examines how some of the complex social relations underlying the practice of architecture tend to render the profession blind to the effects of gender.