Women dominate architecture school but not profession

Jessica Hume

• Last Updated: June 13. 2008 12:35AM UAE / June 12. 2008 8:35PM GMT

Abu Dhabi // At the Petroleum Institute’s department of architecture and design, women rule the roost, outnumbering men by a fair number. So why then, wonders Dr Nadia Alhasani, the director of the department’s female campus, located just across the Maqta Bridge, are there so few women working as professional architects compared with men?

The study of architecture, a traditionally male-dominated field, is booming in both the UAE and around the world. Nevertheless, says Dr Alhasani, when she asks her students to name their favourite architects, most list more than 10 men before proffering the name of even one woman.

“The majority of students of architecture here are female. The curriculum in the men’s college and the women’s college is exactly the same. The end-of-year projects the women do are usually better than the men’s, but then the students who usually go on to start an office are the men,” she says.

George Karodrytis, an associate professor at the American University of Sharjah’s School of Architecture, has noticed the same phenomenon.

He says about 80 per cent of his students are women, although about an equal number of men and women graduate from the programme.

The discrepancy, he speculates, could be due to architecture’s close association with engineering and construction – areas women traditionally have not pursued with the same interest as men.

The increase in women enrolling in university architecture programmes, he says, may be a result of design becoming more difficult to ignore in the context of urban planning. With the rapid development of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, people are also becoming more aware of the role of design in everyday life.

Both cited Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born, London-based architect, as a shining example for their students.

In 2004, Ms Hadid became the first woman to win the Laureate Pritzker Prize, sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture. She has designed the Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as the Sand Dune Bridge currently under construction near the Maqta Bridge in Abu Dhabi.

“Zaha has broken the ground for others, especially Arab women,” Mr Karodrytis says. “And this is so important, it’s so important to have women in architecture. They are more artistic, more creative, they design in a way that’s more sensitive to the user.”

Nevertheless, they agree Ms Hadid’s career path has not been easy.

“She’s paid dearly. She’s won so many architectural competitions and is never awarded the commission,” Dr Alhasani says. “And of course, she’s not an Anglo-Saxon.”

Robert Wilson, a senior vice president at VOA Associates, an international architecture, planning and design firm with an office in Dubai, says there are now many more women in the architecture and design world compared with a decade ago.

But he conceded that his firm employs more men in its architecture department than women – and more women in its interior design department than men.

Architecture “requires lots of hours, it can put a lot of strain on relationships”, he says.

Louise Cox, the first vice president of the International Union of Architects, agrees that “part of it is a difference in priorities”.

“Women aren’t as hungry as men, in general, for the same positions,” she says, citing a study her union conducted.

“You have to be cut-throat, of course,” she says. “But in some ways we have an advantage over men because they tend to treat us extra well. It all depends on who you are and how you deal with people.”

“It’s not about the numbers of women studying architecture in schools, it’s about a change in attitude – among the men and the women. Still, I have hope. If I didn’t, I couldn’t get up there and teach these people,” Alhasani said.



jhume@thenational.ae