Those designers who identify as female have consistently been overlooked—awards come scarce to them, their work is not often featured in key publications and their histories get discounted from archives.1 The extent of this disparity has reached so far as to constitute an erasure from history. In her book Going For Gold: Looking at the gender imbalance of recipients of major architectural awards and prizes, Dr. Liz Walder finds that only 3% of the winners of the top international architecture awards are female.2
Designers who identify as female have consistently been overlooked.
A first step in our campaigning work was to explore gendered data, looking closely at the facts, asking who in architecture gets celebrated and who is left out of recognition. Our findings revealed the extent to which the work of women and gender diverse people have been marginalised. This has become the basis for the campaigns that we have run for the last five years.
The Part W volunteer team had already gathered a handful of times before launching our first campaign. Every other month, we would travel from all points of London to discursively explore issues of gender, equity and design. Each time we met in a different space, moving from one meeting place to another. In the words of Lala Rukh: “We were very conscious of the fact we didn’t have an office or permanent space, we were just meeting here and there… So, it was a very amorphous body.”3
A first step in our campaigning work was to explore gendered data, asking who in architecture gets celebrated and who is left out of recognition.
On our third meeting, with the streets of Kings Cross darkening behind the windows, huddled around a table with a backdrop of architectural models arranged along the walls, we started talking about the representation of women in design. “Just this week” one of our groups noted, “the RIBA Gold Medal has been given to yet another man.”
Another one of us pulled out a smartphone and took a look at the past recipients of that particular medal. The results were shockingly stark. At the time of that meeting, the award had existed since 1848 and had been granted only once to a woman in her own right—Zaha Hadid in 2016.
“Just this week” one of our groups noted, “the RIBA Gold Medal has been given to yet another man.”
It may seem extraordinary, but it took 172 years to loudly highlight this reality. Gendered disparity, however, was not the only discrimination being perpetuated within this award. When we began our campaigning work, no Black designer had ever been awarded the Royal Gold Medal. This is not the only problematic award system: the Japanese Praemium Imperiale International Award, the Pritzker Architecture Prize and other similar global honours have all been skewed towards putting a spotlight on men working in Western cultures, leaving women, gender diverse people, minority groups and people born in the Global South in the shadows.
When we began our campaigning work, no Black designer had ever been awarded the Royal Gold Medal.
For decades, the architectural establishment has not been making great strides towards becoming a more equitable place. The gatekeepers of power—the curators, publishers, faculty leaders, as well as clients and commissioners who decide which work is published and awarded, who is invited to stage and to lecture—had done little to shift the needle.
For all these reasons, pointing out the data and the facts as they stood, was a simple act. Our next step was to develop a response to the problem—to get other people involved and make positive change a reality.
Make sure to get your hands on the first ever Women’s Work: London Map, which can be purchased here. And remember: throughout March—Women’s History Month—raise a glass and honour women of past and present.
Read the whole "Part W at Work" column by part W Collective.
Bio
Part W is an action group that campaigns to raise the profile of women in the built environment by celebrating and drawing attention to women’s projects and skills. It seeks to bring about change in how women’s work in placemaking, design and architecture is valued and recognised—and challenges policies that cause gender discrimination in built environments. The organisation is run by a core steering group of ten women who work across the sectors of architectural design, sustainable transport, planning, design education and journalism.
Notes
1 Sarah Ackland, Revisiting the Collections: The Forgotten Women, see [online]
2 Sara Reis, Impact of Austerity on Women in the UK. Prepared and published by the Women’s Budget Group. Published February 2018. [online]
3 Still I Rise - Feminisms, Gender, Resistance - 3-14 September - 15 Dec 2019, Arnolfini, Bristol.
