What’s Wrong with being “Exceptional”
Photo by McKay Savage, 2009, Creative Commons License.
“I cannot, in whole conscience, recommend architecture as a profession for girls,” architect and Dean of MIT’s architecture school Pietro Belluschi said in the 1950s. This statement is found at the end of a brochure titled, “Should you be an Architect?” His career advice first ran as a public service advertisement in popular magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal and Collier’s before New York Life Insurance reprinted it in 1959 as a stand-alone brochure.
In the article, Belluschi directed all his remarks toward boys until the last paragraph when, after allowing that some women have done well in architecture, he said, “[I]t takes an exceptional girl to make a go of it. If she insisted on becoming an architect, I would try to dissuade her. If she still insists, she may be that exceptional one.”
In 1958, near the time Belluschi’s comments were published, just 1 percent of licensed architects in the US were women. Thirty years later in 1988, a hundred years after the American Institute of Architects admitted Louise Bethune as its first female member, this percentage had increased to just 4 percent. This slow gain is despite legislation like 1964’s Title VII barring discrimination in employment, 1972’s Title IX barring discrimination in education, and the activism of female architects. Other barriers still stood—and stand. In 2021, 24 percent of licensed architects were women.
Until fairly recently, then, women have been uncommon in the profession. Far too often this has resulted in a focus on gender rather than ability. Before she even set sail for Paris where she would become the first woman admitted to study architecture in the École des Beaux-Arts, Julia Morgan (1872 – 1957) was plagued by journalists obsessed with the “manliness” of her chosen career path. Even today, more than one female architect has needed to deflect attention from her gender and focus it on her talent. This is one of the challenges with being seen as “exceptional.”
The political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975), when questioned in 1959 about the exceptionalism of her appointment as the first woman on the Princeton faculty, said, “I am not disturbed at all about being a woman professor, because I am quite used to being a woman.” Scholar Jennie Han interprets this remark in the context of Arendt’s work, writing that Arendt believed, “In claiming for oneself the status of an ‘exception,’ one forgoes the opportunity to challenge the boundaries of membership and the distribution of power and oppression that follow their lines.”
Another risk of being considered “exceptional,” then, is that you can no longer advocate for others of your gender or community. The implication is that you are “that exceptional one” singled out by Belluschi, uniquely worthy of opportunities unavailable to others like you.
In spite of the relatively low percentage of women practicing architecture as compared to men, it is no longer uncommon for architects to be female. If anyone suggests otherwise, channel Arendt and say, “I am not disturbed at all about being a woman architect, because I am quite used to being a woman.” If you do not identify as a woman, modify the statement to being around women architects and women.
This Women’s History Month, while we celebrate the historical “exceptional” women who succeeded in spite of the barriers to getting into and staying in the profession, we should also mourn for the women who were shut out or discouraged. The magnitude and impact of the resulting loss of their talent, vision, and brilliance are unknowable. As a profession, we need to work to end gender bias in pay, hiring, and promotion, and to promote equity at home and at work. Until we do, the losses will continue to accrue.
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