The University of Minnesota Andersen Library is currently hosting an exhibit on the Minnesota women architects whose work is in the collection of the Northwest Architectural Archives (NAA), and SALA is proud to have two of our former partners featured! I was invited to be part of a panel discussion with several other architects at the opening reception a few weeks ago, and thought I’d share some thoughts about this important topic.
The exhibit tells the often overlooked stories of many of these determined women, and how they carved a place for themselves in a traditionally male-dominated field. It starts off with an impressive timeline showing the women present in the NAA and other prominent Minnesota women architects within the context of national events, both architecture specific and those that affected women more broadly. Integrated within the timeline are graphs showing the percentage of women AIA members over time (up to 27% as of 2023) and architecture degrees earned by women (now at 53%).
Of the architects present in the NAA, two are SALA’s own: founding partner Sarah Susanka, FAIA, and the third to join the partnership, Michaela Mahady, AIA. At the time when Michaela became partner, SALA (then Mulfinger, Susanka, Mahady & Partners) was the only architecture firm in the Twin Cities with two female partners. It was lovely to see their sketches, drawings, and books on display.
In my role as a panelist, I was honored to be able to provide some perspective as a woman working in the field today, alongside a group of esteemed women architects of the generations before mine. We had a great discussion through which we enjoyed hearing stories from each others’ experiences and acknowledged the progress that’s been made in the six decades that our collective careers have spanned.
While we should celebrate how far we’ve come, it’s also important to call out the challenges that still exist for women in our profession. In a previous blog, I explained the concept of the “leaky pipeline” which describes the shrinking ratio of women with each successive step up the architecture career ladder. Why is this? As the exhibit makes clear, architecture has not historically been welcoming to women. In earlier times it was simply considered a “masculine” profession, and overt sexism suggested that women weren’t mentally or physically capable of the tasks that architecture would require. Today, the challenges manifest in other ways, such as inflexibility and long hours that are incompatible with caregiving roles (which traditionally fall unequally on women), lack of role models or mentors, or simply more subtle discrimination. While I was able to offer a positive perspective from my experiences, I know that I am lucky to have advantages at SALA that are not afforded to all of my female peers working in architecture.
Let’s continue to recognize the contributions of women architects and advocate for changes that create equal opportunities in architecture. The exhibit is up through the end of May- stop by and see it!
