The Field

A response to the article ‘Why Are Women Leaving Architecture?‘ by Beth R. Mosenthal, AIA, LEED AP BD+C
Courtesy Building Dialogue, June 2016

The Women in Landscape Architecture Professional Practice Network (WILA PPN) leadership team thought that this article holds relevance to our field in landscape architecture. Is there gender equity in landscape architecture? I believe that it is much the same as in architecture, though their numbers appear to be more drastic than ours. Take a look at the article, Why Are Women Leaving Architecture?, from the June 2016 issue of Building Dialogue, and know the following stats for landscape architecture:

• 48% female graduates of accredited landscape architecture programs in 2015 (source: LAAB 2015 Annual Report Summary)
• 49% female LARE candidates (source: CLARB / April 2014 exam administration)
• 36% female ASLA members (source: ASLA Notes & Numbers)
• 19.5% female ASLA Fellows (source: Council of Fellows)

We continue to try and understand what happens to women in the workplace and the different career paths (or mommy paths) that are taken. What is the percentage of women who own companies or are principals in firms? Our (WILA) gut feeling is that numbers such as these would be low. How many women leave the workforce and never re-enter? And if they re-enter, what is their career path? How do we even track that? We should gather trends from the extensive work of AIA in their Equity by Design initiative and Diversity in the Profession of Architecture Report, and learn from our sister organization.

The WILA PPN has developed a survey that we would like you to take, both men and women—we would like your help in collecting information on the demographics of the field of landscape architecture. Please take 10 minutes to participate in our survey:

WILA PPN Survey

We aim to collect several hundred responses from both MEN and WOMEN all over the country to be statistically representative of the field. We anticipate this survey to be the start a more in depth study of the field akin to the recent study in the field of architecture called The Missing 32%. Folks often assume that landscape architecture fares similarly to architecture or other allied fields in terms of demographics; a study like this will help discover if that is in fact the case.

We hope to have preliminary data by World Landscape Architecture Month 2017. Once complete, an infographic summarizing the information will be developed and shared.

by Emily O’Mahoney, ASLA, WILA PPN Officer and Past Chair, and the WILA PPN Leadership Team