Back in the late 80’s when I was fresh from college, working for a London firm of architects was an exciting and fun-filled experience. I was young and probably quite naive and perhaps caused a little stir through the entirely male architect workforce; most of the chaps were young and single and it was clear that there was plenty of testosterone and “artistic temperament” in the office. This always seemed to be balanced by the entirely female admin employees and the odd female planner or drawing technician.
After 5 years of working there we had a female architect join, but I do recall that she was only ever given the work of a drawing technician and she left within about 7 months. I think perhaps I rocked the boat when I asked for an assistant and interviewed a handful of applicants and took on an assistant who was probably the only male admin person in the company.
The only female Partner within the company out of the 5 partners had a reputation for being a ‘hard bitch’ and no admin staff ever wanted to work with her… actually nobody wanted to work with her full stop! It was acknowledged that she was working in a ‘man’s world’ (back then) and had to be hard, unrelenting, and take no nonsense!
Looking back now, I realise how unbalanced the set up was and it seems absurd that the male and female roles were so delineated but as a youngster I accepted that. I think today there is a little more balance in the workplace but there still needs to be more change—it has taken over 30 years to get this far.
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