Newsletter | Nov/Dec 1973

AIA Task Force on Women by Janet Crane AIA TASK FORCE ON WOMEN At the beginning of November, the OWA received a letter from Judith Edelman chairwoman of the AIA taskforce "the SubCommittee on Women and other Minorities in Architecture".( The aim of this taskforce is "the implementation of an affirmative action program to implement the Equal Opportunity Section of the 'Manual of Personnel Practice', AIA", although Ms Edelman has permission to limit its scope to women since the AIA has a whole department devoted to racial minorities. The letter continues "I need your help! Most important, I.need your ideas, suggestions and support. I need a sub-committee member from your.area and I hope that you as a group will select this person as soon as possible; it is not required that this person be a member of the AIA. To quote again, this is the brief statement of intent submitted to the board: "A sub-committee to be chaired by Ms Judith Edelman AIA is being formed and an "action program" is being developed. Chairwoman Edelman hopes to broaden the cope of her Committee's work to encomass far more on the subject than just equal opportunity for employment of women in architecture. Her program includes analysis of the survey being conducted by the AIA to identify women in the profession, obtaining as much information as possible on relative salaries and job opportunities for women, and gathering individual case histories reflecting discrimination and bias. She plans to organize a nation-wide group of women architects who will contribute to the study. She also plans to work with other groups such as the Alliance of Women in Architecture in New York, the WALAP in Boston and OWA in San Francisco. Finally, the information thus gathered will be used to formulate policies and recommendations for presentation to the Board and Membership." During the last OWA meeting, I volunteered to call Ms Edelman in New York, courtesy of the AIA, and did so in late November. She asked us to help her distribute the questionnaire mentioned in her letter, and which she hoped would be published in the mid-December issue of the AIA "Memo" ' a national publication, copies of which appear here at the beginning of January. This survey will be similar to one that was conducted by the New York State AIA. The survey form is addressed to both men nd women and includes questions on age, qualifications, past and present employment and salaries. The results of the New York survey are published under the title "Women in the profession" and gave statistical comparisons o,f this data for men and women. Needless to say, the results show clear inequalities in pay and responsibility even though the professional qualifications of the sample were evenly matched with regard to education and experience. Ms Edelman would like the AIA's national survey to have a wider base of respondents than would be reached by normal AIA channels so she has asked the MA to mail us extra copies of the survey for us to distribute to non-AIA members of both sexes. She also hopes to distribute another survey at a later date directed only to women asking for fuller descriptions of "Job status, personal experiences, and perceptions of discrimination." In a second specific request, Ms Edelman asked for suggestions on how to present all the information that her task force will collect. The idea of yet another report is not appealing and this is a challenging problem that should be discussed at our next meeting. Ms Edelman hopes to be visiting the Bay area in January and hopes to be able to meet-with us.

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