The “Femmes architectes” award aims to highlight and publicize the work and careers of women architects, so that young women can be inspired by well-known female models, thus encouraging parity in a profession with a strong male dominance.

In 2011, the National council of the Order of architects commissioned the IFOP survey institute to study the profession of the architect in France. The study revealed that since the 1970s, the number of women in the profession has known a steady increase.

Nevertheless, although the number of female students is now higher than that of male students, the number of women registered as architects in the Order of architects is still much lower than that of men. Moreover, most of them work as employees in architectural firms and still very few women are self-employed.

According to the survey, the difficulties encountered by women in this sector are mainly related to professional integration but also to unequal considerations and salary which continue to hamper the integration of women in this field. In 2011, a male architect earns 1.9 times a woman’s salary for an equivalent job, almost double the amount.

As the results of the survey show, the additional difficulties encountered by young women inexorably lead to low amounts of women in positions of responsibility, lower hierarchical coefficients, a highly gendered distribution of tasks and considerable pay gaps.

Re-evaluating the work of women architects by awarding prizes based on criteria of excellence is thus an important step which is part of the deconstruction of systems of inequalities that govern the social relations between men and women.

The prizes will be awarded along four categories: the Young Woman Architect award for women under 40, the Prize for Original Work, the Female Architect award for three to five works and the International Prize, rewarding three to five works built ouside of France by a woman architect registered in the Order of architects of her area.

Applications will be open until July 31, 2017 and the award ceremony will be held at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal on December 11^th (subject to availability).

Find out more details on the femmes architectes website.