Is the Architecture World Sexist?

Women have come a long way in the arts, but there’s still a long way to go. It’s not so unusual to find the work of contemporary women artists in galleries and art historians continue to comb through the past in search of overlooked women visionaries. In the world of architecture, however, the fight for gender equality rages on, but a blast from the past recently put that inequity front and center again. Recently, Denise Scott Brown argued to Architecture Magazine that she should have received equal credit with her business partner and husband Robert Venturi on the 1991 Pritzker Prize, the highest honor for a working architect.  “They owe me not a Pritzker Prize,” Brown contended, “but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony.” A petition on Change.org now asks architects and fans of architecture to stand with Brown and compel the Pritzker people to right this wrong. But, as Brown as others demonstrate, the idea of “women architects” as different from the idea of architects with a male default setting continues to cripple women looking to break through (ironically) this particular glass ceiling. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is the Architecture World Sexist?" 

[Image: Zaha Hadid. Pierresvives, Montpellier, France. Photography by Helene Binet.]

[Many thanks to Rizzoli USA for the image above from and a review copy of Zaha Hadid: Pierres Vives, written by Zaha Hadid Architects, edited by Stephane Hof, and photographed by Helene Binet.]