Journal of History and Culture Journal of History and Culture

j o u r n a l o f h i s t o r y a n d c u l t u r e
The 21 st Century’s Lack of a Diverse Profession
To date, there are 130,000+ licensed architects in the United States; only 1% (1,662) are African-American,
and of the 1,662, only 224 are women. Current American Institute of Architects (AIA) membership statistics
reveal that Native Americans comprise a mere 0.2%, African American 0.9%, Latino 2.1%, and Asians 3.1% of
all registered architects. 57 In each of these underrepresented groups, men far outnumber women not only in the
practice of architecture but also in careers as educators in professional programs.
In 1990, Linda Groat and Sherry Ahrentzen conducted thorough investigations documenting 210 female
architecture full and part-time faculty across the United States for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
(ACSA). 58 They analyzed demographics within schools and found that women were grossly underrepresented among
the ranks of tenured faculty. Groat and Ahrentzen also pointed out that two-thirds of these women believed that
sexism was inherent in architecture education. Over one-third of the women faculty surveyed perceived significant
disparities in salary, appointments to institutionally important committees, and standards for promotion.
A March 1999 study by the MIT Council on Faculty Diversity published in the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) Faculty Newsletter reported the results of a study on the status of female faculty in the schools of
architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; and the Sloan School of Management.
The study found that many tenured women faculty experienced professional marginalization accompanied by
inequities such as lower salaries, less office space, fewer resources for their research than male colleagues, greater
family responsibility, and exclusion from important decision-making roles in their departments. The report
documented the small number of female faculty—15 tenured women versus 197 tenured males in 1994—and the
fact that the percentage of female faculty had remained unchanged for at least 10 and probably 20 years. Only 16% of
the MIT faculty was female. In architecture and planning, the proportion of female faculty was high relative to other
schools. Problems occurred in promoting junior female to tenure from within the organization. The Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) Faculty Newsletter also reported that outside MIT, the study on the status of female
faculty in science resonated widely with professional women. 59 The problems identified in the MIT report proved
to be essentially universal for professional women in the United States.
According to the authors Gurel and Anthony, since the late 1970s, the architectural discipline has witnessed
an increased interest in feminist research. 60 They further stated that some feminist historians have pursued research
to expose contributions of prolific women architects who left a mark on the architecture landscape but have not
received the recognition they deserved. 61 Among these are biographies, essays, and exhibitions on Julia Morgan,
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