Mentorship and sponsorship -- and especially having access to career advice from a senior leader in one’s own firm -- emerged as important predictors of career success in the 2016 Equity in Architecture Survey. We found that male respondents were more likely than female respondents to report turning to someone senior within their own office for career guidance.. Meanwhile, female respondents were more likely than their male counterparts to turn to senior leaders outside of their offices, family & friends, and their peers for guidance. They were also more likely to consider gender as a factor when describing their mentors.

Male respondents’ increased likelihood of turning to senior leaders is especially significant because, compared to those who received no career guidance, those who turned to a senior leader within their firm were more more optimistic about their professional futures, more energized by their work, more likely to plan to stay at their current job. These correlations were stronger for female than for male respondents, suggesting that female respondents have more to gain by finding a senior mentor from their own firm.

The next career dynamic, pay equity, documents the wage gap between our male and female respondents. At every level of experience, our male respondents made more, on average, than our female respondents, with the highest differences at the top of the experience spectrum.

One of the most important ways of looking at the wage gap is to assess whether respondents are receiving equal pay for equal work. Our data showed a gender-based wage gap for every project role, with the largest gap between male and female design principals.

Not only did our female respondents make less money on average than their male counterparts, but they were more likely to report having faced a host of work-life conflicts, from poor health and neglected personal duties to turning down travel or even leaving a job. It’s also important to note that our respondents, both male and female, were much more likely to report facing personal setbacks in the face of work-life conflict than they were to report making professional trade-offs in these situations.

The last career dynamic, Beyond architecture, tracks individuals who are currently working in settings other than firms or sole proprietorships, as well as full-time caregivers and those who are unemployed. We also consider those who have spent time away from a firm or sole proprietorship in the past, whether to pursue another career opportunity, or to take a sabbatical or leave of absence.

Overall, 17% of our male respondents, and 18% of our female respondents, we currently working outside of an architecture setting, full-time caregivers, or unemployed. Most of these individuals were working in another setting, but still influenced the built environment in some way. 

The curriculum that both men and women say was most instrumental in preparing them were Design and Design Thinking, Construction Materials and Methods, and Building Systems. Meanwhile, respondents were most likely to say that Professional Practice/Business, Construction Materials and Methods, and Building Systems weren’t addressed fully enough to prepare them for a career in architecture. Women were more likely than men to report needing additional curricular focus on Construction Materials and Methods, and on Building Systems.

Even within the first several years of one’s career, there were clear gendered divisions in the office management tasks that respondents took on, with female respondents with less than 5 years experience more likely than their male counterparts to take on planning office events and managing the office library and less likely to take on more strategic tasks like firm project standards, strategic planning, or firm operations and management.

The survey demonstrated that licensure presents many professionals with challenges, with long work hours, the high cost of registration and exams, and low perceived rewards as the most frequently cited challenges. Female respondents were more likely than male respondents to experience every one of these challenges to licensure.

The next major career pinchpoint – working caregivers – impacts many of our respondents. Amongst those currently practicing architecture, female respondents were less likely to have children than their male counterparts at every level of experience. This could suggest that female practitioners who have children are more likely than male practitioners with children to leave the field, resulting in a higher likelihood of being a practicing father than being a practicing mother. It could also suggest that women who pursue architecture are simply less likely than their male counterparts to become parents. Neither hypothesis can be confirmed by this survey, but this question is worth exploring in future research.

While female respondents were less likely than their male counterparts to be working parents, we found that those who were parents tended to bear more responsibility for childcare. Working mothers were approximately 10 times as likely as their male counterparts to be their children’s primary caregiver (48% of mothers vs. 5% of fathers). Meanwhile, 55% of fathers, and 10% of mothers, reported that their partner did more childcare.

The culmination of all of these pinch points is a glass ceiling that we’ve found persists in architecture. While 8% of our female respondents, and 5% of our male respondents reported working in a firm that was mostly, or completely led by women, the majority of our respondents – male and female—reported working in a firm that was mostly or completely led by men.

While some of this leadership imbalance may be attributable to the pipeline issues (i.e. more men than women entered the field in the past, resulting in more men positioned for leadership in the present), this isn’t the entire story. White male respondents were more likely than non-white men and both white women and women of color to be principals or partners at nearly every level of experience. Men of color were the least likely of any group to be principals or partners in a firm.