Caven, V (2009) Designing a career: Men and architecture. In: Dainty, A R J (ed.) Proceedings of 25th Annual ARCOM Conference, 7-9 September 2009, Nottingham, UK.
Abstract
Much attention has been paid to the careers of women in the construction and architecture in particular. Difficulties faced by women working in the architecture profession have been identified as long working hours, poor pay, paternalistic culture, sexism and task restriction. These are all measured against an assumed masculine norm, however, there is little or no work on what constitutes this norm or how it came to be established, other than an idea that it is due to the critical mass of men involved in the industry and related cultural assumptions. It has been argued that what it means to be an architect has been determined and tightly controlled by male architects and women are thereby excluded from these masculine norms. However, this is a paucity of work examining how working within these masculine norms affects male architects. Drawing on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with male architects examining their careers in detail from what made them choose the profession initially to the issues which confront them on a day to day basis, the author uses the same research tools as previous research into the careers of women architects in order to provide a direct comparison. Findings indicate that the male architects have very similar concerns about their work, career and work-life balance as the women. The conclusion is that the norm of masculinity in the construction industry must be questioned.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | architecture; career; men; profession; work-life balance |
| Index terms: | construction industry, work-life balance, norms, working hours, career, profession, architect, women, drawing, interview, masculinity |
| Subjects: | profession, data collection methods, institututions, technical documentation, management, professional development, employment law, sociology, industry analysis |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Information Management, Legal Issues, Design Practice, Human Resources |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here