ANNUAL WOMEN’S ROUNDTABLE | 2024
As part of our effort to celebrate Women’s History Month here at MV+A, Project Architect Prova Zaman-Haque convened four firm colleagues for a candid conversation about their experiences as women in the architectural profession and how their experiences at MV+A have informed and contributed to their professional development.
Below is an abbreviated transcript; please note that minimal paraphrasing and insertions have been utilized for readability. To watch the full discussion, please click HERE to visit our YouTube channel.
Intro by Prova Zaman-Haque:
To celebrate Women’s History Month this year, we are bringing back our panel discussion with a bow to the talented Project Architects at MV+A Architects who are currently navigating our industry. Alyssa Hutchison, Colleen Korp, Dewi Tan, and Rachel Jessup shared their experiences, the challenges, and rewards faced by women in architecture, and how the industry can further support women and gender equality.
Prova Zaman-Haque: So, when we speak of architecture school, we know that there’s a 50-50 split between the genders in the USA, but if you look at the statistics that the AIA rolls out most years, you see that the number of licensed architect females is 20%—so there’s this gap, this disconnect. In your experience, what do you think these gaps are?
Dewi Tan: It’s a little harder for me—not just my gender but also my nationality. To get licensed in the US you must be from a listed accredited school in the US. My school is a non-accredited school and in some states there’s zero chance for me to get licensed. But, luckily, in Maryland there is a way to get licensed by exchanging your work experience. In my case it was 4 years of work experience. That is the main reason I was so late in getting my license because I had to spend a lot of time documenting my experience before I could even take the exam. And, on top of that, I had to work something like three thousand hours for the AXP. So, when I was finally eligible to take the exam, I did it in like two or three months—I just wanted to get it done.
Prova Zaman-Haque: Yeah, 100% agreed. I have a lot of friends who are also international and I think with those statistics you have to dig in a little deeper. To get licensed, for those coming from abroad, not only are there cultural issues and barriers, but also financial, because, with a lot of international students, you’re having to work full time without any financial support and usually you don’t have family nearby, so there’s also emotional layers to that.
Alyssa Hutchison: I mean, if you look at it – when you get out of grad school or undergrad, it’s the time that people start to have families. It’s when people are building relationships, maybe starting families, and I unfortunately think a lot of that responsibility still falls onto women, like childcare, etc. So that would probably have a pretty big impact for those going through it, I think.
Rachel Jessup: I would say in terms of barriers in the industry, to me, what I resonate with didn’t happen for me. I ended up liking the professional world, but I think there’s a big disparity between what school is like for architecture in the United States. It’s not necessarily a practical application of the profession, which is the whole point, it is supposed to train us how to think like an architect.
There are some folks that I was friends with who wanted to do graphic design and an architecture degree was a good way to get there, but they didn’t really realize they actually don’t enjoy any of this other stuff other than the graphic design part of it. In school we did a lot of Photoshop, Illustrator, and things like that. So, I had a lot of friends that either went into graphic design or in some cases were starting a family or helping their partner start a company, but they probably weren’t in the census.
It’s not necessarily like a barrier. I just think it’s the way our schooling is. It’s not made to funnel people to be leaders in the industry necessarily, just depends how people let their paths take them, maybe takes them into architecture late in life or takes them out.
Colleen Korp: I feel like if you talk to any woman architect, EVER—they will say: “Get licensed fast, get licensed fast, get licensed fast!” Because the assumption was that once your life really started, you weren’t going to have time, funds, etc. to actually complete the process. Or it was going to take exponentially longer. Out of my friends that are licensed, that was a big motivator as to why we did it early.
Also, I don’t know if this effects women any more than men, but it’s a huge financial blow. I graduated with loans I paid for. I did the five-year Bachelor of Architecture. So, I only had five years of school to pay for, as opposed to 6 or 7, but it’s still it’s a lot of money and I worked my way through school to pay that off, but I still had loans to pay off. Our office thankfully does reimburse for your exams once you’re done. But I have friends for whom that’s not the case. They’re not expecting to be reimbursed and they’re not expecting a raise even when they finish. So for them it’s like, why would I do this? There’s no point.
Clockwise from Upper Right: Prova Zaman-Haque, Alyssa Hutchison, Rachel Jessup, Dewi Tan, Colleen Korp.
Prova Zaman-Haque: Going on from what Alyssa touched on, since we’re talking amongst architects in our late 20’s or30’s, right? I think a key barrier in our journeys right now, for those who are thinking about it or talking about it, is having children. That becomes a massive barrier, once you have become licensed, and then how to progress in your career. So, I think I think it’s fair to bring Rachel into this conversation. She is a mother to a one-year-old. So, Rachel, what do you do?
Rachel Jessup: I think since the pandemic having remote option available has changed things completely and I’ve struggled to imagine how I would have even gotten through my pregnancy without the ability to do some remote work like having that it just made it a lot less stressful, like knowing, hey, I can work from home the last few weeks of my pregnancy and not have to deal with the possibility of going into labor in the office.
Prova Zaman-Haque: Because I think people forget, right? It’s not just AFTER the birth but BEFORE it; you’re nine months pregnant— which is a huge toll on your body, and there’s the commute for many of us, right? So it’s not just about the five months of maternity leave after, it’s also just a huge physically challenging time for females.
Rachel Jessup: And I think for me, I’m very happy that I ended up at MV+A when I decided that I wanted to become a mom. Because there was a lot of flexibility offered to me and just being able to take off some time or work from home when I was pregnant and have flexibility. I decided that I wanted to take six months—we worked together. With many companies, especially a smaller company, there’s often not a robust policy in place and until it happens, there’s a need to set what the rules are—what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, and what flexibility could be gained, and things like that. It’s a hard process, so the more flexibility you can get the better.
Prova Zaman-Haque: Yeah, a lot of firms that are our size, or smaller, usually go through the process once one of their employees goes through the process. So I think it’s important for a firm to be humane and to approach it compassionately—with empathy, right? And that’s where the culture defers: from a firm that you want to work for and a firm you don’t. I always think that the firms who approach their employees, who are their biggest assets, through empathy and compassion are the firms that are going to retain their staff longer. And for MV+A, I think they try to do that—to deal with everyone individually.
Rachel Jessup: One more thing I’ll add is that when you come back from maternity leave, you’re your own worst enemy. When you’re like: I need to prove myself! Honestly, you don’t even know if you can function in society anymore. So, you push yourself really hard. And this is true even if you’re not a mom—you have to give yourself grace to have a good work life balance.
It has to becoming from you. Because you may have supportive people around you, but really, you have to be the one telling yourself: hey, life is important too, not just work. But being in a supportive environment where you know you’re not going to get pushed back for needing to leave early one day or whatever, it just helps.
MV+A’s 2024 Women’s History Month Happy Hour [in St. Patrick’s Day green]
Prova Zaman-Haque: So, to conclude, if you were to give some advice to a woman starting their career in this profession, what would it be?
Alyssa Hutchison: I would say to ‘Be your own biggest advocate’, no one’s going to root for you as much as you root for you. I personally struggle with impostor syndrome sometimes, like, I don’t know if I’m good enough, I’m doing this correctly, and I think as women we kind of have this tendency to like, not want to ruffle any feathers. We can be a little bit of a people pleaser and it’s OK to do those things if you know you’re doing what you think is right.
Yeah, it’s OK to be confident and say I deserve to be here. I do know what I’m doing. I am great at my job.
Prova Zaman-Haque: Something I always tell myself is to: ‘Show up’. Show up on a good day, show up on a bad day, show up on the day you don’t want to go into work because you’ve had a bad day yesterday. I think more often than not it’s never that bad once you go in the next day. And I always thank myself and I am glad that I showed up! And I think it adds up—you get through it.
Colleen Korp: I think my biggest one is like: ‘Be curious’—got a little Ted Lasso here! If you’re approaching something new and you’re going to have questions, you’re going to wonder, well, what’s this? What’s that and like? Ask those questions, it’s OK to be curious. It’s good to ask questions. You’ll never know what you’re going to learn out of it.
Dewi Tan: ‘You have to advocate for yourself.’ For me—because I’m Asian—and this may sound like stereotyping, but I’m quiet, not at all loud. So, that’s one of the biggest things I learned whilst working at MV+A, to advocate for yourself; hard work alone is not enough. If you don’t advocate for yourself, no one else will do it for you. And the other thing is that you don’t have to make everyone happy. Just keep doing your best and if people don’t appreciate what you’re doing, then maybe it’s not the place for you and it’s ok to move on. Choose the fight worth fighting for.
Rachel Jessup: When you’re first starting out, try to just ‘grab any opportunity you can’. I think what I found happening a lot—specifically working on multifamily—a lot of women were put in roles where they were just doing apartment design. It became almost this gendered thing, where the outside of the building was men and the inside, specifically the apartment units, were women. And we’re not talking about interior design and finishes. I’ve found that in our industry, there is this thing where you can get pigeonholed—especially at bigger companies. I think there is a line where you have to be looking for gaps that you can fill. That’s just the way I got the most variety of experience and just trying to do something different that you’ve never done before. And it’s not the worst advice as you get older too, because we all need fresh things!
Having women in the construction industry is not about diversity for diversity’s sake; it’s about recognizing the immense value they bring to the table. Women bring diverse perspectives. Their presence fosters a more inclusive and supportive work environment, which ultimately leads to better decision-making and higher productivity! While there has been progress over the years, barriers still exist within the profession for women architects. I am proud of MV+A’s efforts to promote diversity in architecture and a better community through education, support, and mentorship.
—Prova Zaman-Haque