'Designing women' : gender and the architectural profession / Annmarie Adams and Peta Tancred.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Women architects in Canada have reacted with ingenuity to the architectural profession's restrictive and sometimes discriminatory practices, contributing major innovations in practice and design to the field.

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CHOICE Review

In "Designing Women," Adams and Tancred (architectural historian; sociologist, respectively, McGill Univ.) bring new insight to an ongoing debate in contemporary society: the role and contribution of professional women in a male-dominated professional world. The thrust of the book is the issue of how architecture traditionally "defined" its female practitioners, and how, through active participation, these same women redesigned the architectural domain. Contrary to conventional wisdom indicating that women were too few in number and therefore making only a limited contribution to the field, the authors argue that by successfully navigating the rules of practice governing the male-dominated field, women have had a substantial impact on architecture. Adams and Tancred demonstrate this by analyzing, in minute detail, the contributions that women have made to the development of Canadian architecture. The results of this analysis are put in proper context by contrasting them with similar studies in Australia and the US. Although the book occasionally slips into thick, jargon-laced phraseology, it is well written, well researched, and illustrated with tables and black-and-white historical advertisements, among others. A welcome addition to male-dominated architectural literature. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. L. B. Sickels-Taves; Eastern Michigan University