Before she became a decorator and architect, Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) taught art, created art, and gave lectures for the Civic League, New Century Club, National League for Civic Improvement, and other organizations.

Women’s clubs such as the New Century Club, where Colter was a member, provided women—at least, middle- and upper-class women—with an opportunity to find their voices. Whether in the discussions following talks by outside lecturers or by researching and presenting their own papers at club meetings, members gained valuable public speaking practice. Their skills and confidence opened doors for themselves and other women.

Alice Constance Austin (1862 – 1955) was born in Chicago and moved with her family to Santa Barbara, California. The family traveled extensively around the US and Europe. On her travels, Austin took note of geological formations, tunnels, and towns; her paper “Chalk and Chalk Towns” was published in the Proceedings of the Santa Barbara Society of Natural History in 1902. It is not known how Austin acquired her design skills, but in 1888 she designed a home in Santa Barbara for her parents and herself.

Austin was a feminist and socialist as well as a designer. Around 1914, she had the opportunity to pitch her design for a socialist city to socialist attorney and politician Job Harriman and several hundred like-minded people. They had left Los Angeles to develop their own community in the nearby Antelope Valley, living in tents and a few crude buildings on the site while the planning the construction of Llano del Rio, a Utopian community.

A recent study of 25,000 documents evaluating employee performance found that women were 22 percent more likely to receive personality-based feedback than men. Black, Latinx, and older employees also consistently received lower-quality feedback than white men. This was true across all organizations and regardless of the gender of the evaluator.

Personality-based feedback, which might include words like “abrasive,” “collaborative,” or “opinionated,” is not actionable or constructive. It potentially limits opportunities for career advancement. In addition, it is susceptible to implicit bias—bias the bias-holder may be unaware they hold. For example, women were 11 times more likely to be called “abrasive” than men, according to the study. Owing to gender stereotypes, women are often considered aggressive or abrasive for behaviors that would be considered assertive or ambitious—and completely acceptable—in men.

In addition to her architecture and interior design work at hospitality company Fred Harvey, Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) also helped design a china pattern. The Mimbreño china pattern was used in the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway’s Super Chief dining cars for thirty-four years beginning in 1937. The designs were based on pottery decorations made by people in the Mimbres River Valley in southern New Mexico and in southwestern Arizona from the late tenth century to 1130 A.D. The pottery featured both geometric patterns and whimsical figures of animals painted in black and red.

When Colter was asked to produce an “Indian-themed” china pattern for use on the Super Chief-Two’s service from Chicago to Los Angeles, she thought of the Mimbres pots. Colter had previously duplicated some of the Mimbres designs on the walls of her 1932 Desert View Watchtower building. According to Colter’s secretary Sadie Rubins (who did the leg work of locating examples of the pottery), Colter visited museum collections to further study examples of the prehistoric vessels before creating thirty-seven designs based on them.

Minerva Parker was born in 1862 in Glasford, Illinois. Her father died during the Civil War when she was 14 months old. Her mother, older sister, and Minerva moved to Chicago in 1871, and to Philadelphia in 1876 after her mother remarried. Minerva’s stepfather died the following year, and her mother opened a boarding house.

In 1880, Minerva was working as a housekeeper and governess but she aspired to enter her grandfather’s profession of architecture. During the early 1880s she took several drafting courses. In 1885, Minerva Parker found a position as an apprentice in an architect’s office, and in the late 1880s, she opened her own practice. She is recognized as the first female solo practitioner in the US. Parker designed many houses for clients in the nearby suburbs of Philadelphia, including one for suffragist Rachel Foster Avery in 1890.

Imagine contributing an idea at a meeting and having it ignored until a man presents the idea as his own, at which point the group takes it seriously. Half of all female architects do not have to imagine having an idea stolen because they have experienced it, an AIA/The Center for WorkLife Law study found. In comparison, less than one-third of male architects surveyed reported an idea-theft. For women, it is such a common occurrence across professions that they have come up with terms for it like “bro-propriation” and “he-peating.”

While the terms are amusing, the root cause and its impacts are not. It is a symptom of the usually unconscious bias resulting in women being considered less competent than men. This can lead to confirmation bias: “We see what we expect to see, so if we were not expecting a great idea to come from a woman, we are less likely to pay attention when it does, leaving the opportunity open for someone else to pick it up and repeat it,” the AIA/The Center for WorkLife Law study authors write.

In 1938, more than 334,000 people visited Grand Canyon National Park. Although this is a fraction of today’s visitors annually, it represented a 760 percent increase from just twenty years earlier. As more people traveled to Grand Canyon National Park, the need for accommodations for both guests and employees grew.

Hospitality company Fred Harvey was the park’s concessionaire and operated hotels, campgrounds, restaurants, and tours on the south rim of the park. Its Bright Angel Lodge and Cabins first opened in 1935 to help meet the demand for more lodging. Fred Harvey turned to the same architect for the design of two new employee dormitories: Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958).

Sophia Gregoria Hayden (1868–1953) was born in Chile to a Peruvian mother and American father. As a girl she moved to her grandparents’ Boston-area home and attended the Hillside School. In 1886, Hayden became the first woman admitted to MIT’s Bachelor of Architecture program.

After graduating with honors in 1890, Hayden began teaching mechanical drafting in a Boston-area grammar school. In early 1891, she learned about a design competition for the Women’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The exposition’s Board of Lady Managers restricted the competition for the building, which was to contain exhibits made by women, to female architects.

March 14 is Equal Pay Day. It represents how far into this calendar year women in the U.S. had to work to earn what men earned in 2022. Women across occupations earned 84 cents for each dollar earned by men in 2020, a Pew Research Center’s analysis found. In architecture, full-time female architects earned just 78 percent of their male colleague’s salaries, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2019.

This disparity in pay has narrowed since the passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act, but at a glacial speed. At the current pace, it will take 40 more years for women to reach pay parity with men, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The wait will be even longer for many women of color as compared to white men: over 100 years for Black women and almost 200 years for Hispanic or Latina women.

In 1890, only twenty-two of the more than eight thousand architects in the U.S. were female, according to the U.S. Census—just 0.3 percent. In contrast, the occupation category “Artists and teachers of art” was 48 percent female. This was a significant percentage, especially since only about 17 percent of females over age ten were employed in any occupation in 1890.

Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter (1869 – 1959) was one of the women drawn to a career in art. After graduating from high school in 1888, Colter left St. Paul, Minnesota to attend the California School of Design in San Francisco. While studying art there, she also worked in an architecture firm. By spring 1892, Colter was supervising drawing at the Manual Training School in Menemonie, Wisconsin. ln November 1892, Colter returned to St. Paul when she got a position teaching freehand drawing at its manual training school. Her pay was $50 per month (about $1,600 in 2023 dollars).

Anne Graham Rockfellow was born in Mount Morris, New York in 1866. By age thirteen, Annie had decided to pursue a career in architecture—a decision apparently supported by her family. One visitor to the Rockfellow home in Rochester, New York was architect William C. Walker. After seeing plans drawn by young Annie, Walker encouraged her to take the Tech course at MIT and offered to hire her when she finished.

Rockfellow followed Walker’s advice and was the first woman admitted to MIT’s two-year program in architecture. While she later recalled most of her fellow students—all male—as “good comrades,” she felt the weight of her singularity. “I felt that the reputation of my sex on my shoulders and worked long and hard,” Rockfellow wrote in 1938. After earning a Diploma in Architecture in 1887, she returned to Rochester and the promised employment with Walker’s firm.

As humans, we equate confidence with competence and believe that women are less confident than men, researchers found. We also link competence and maleness, another study found. As a society, then, we hold a generalized, unconscious belief that men are more competent than women—regardless of individual skill or ability.

As a result of these biases in the workplace, many women endure inequities like lower pay and fewer opportunities to advance than similarly or less qualified males; receiving less desirable work assignments; and being interrupted at meetings at far greater rates than their male colleagues. They also often face backlash for (or anticipate backlash and refrain from) self-advocating or assertive behavior that is not only tolerated but expected from men.

In 1914, Mary E. J. Colter designed and supervised the construction of two observatories and rest houses on the rim of the Grand Canyon. The buildings were constructed in anticipation of a surge of visitors stopping at the canyon on their way to the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. “Two fairs for one fare!” trumpeted an ad for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway; “Plan now to go and visit Grand Canyon Arizona on the way,” directed another.

The railway’s investment in the Grand Canyon extended well beyond the canyon itself. It also created a 5.5 acre Grand Canyon exhibit at the San Francisco exposition. A newspaper report described the exhibit as “an exact replica of nature’s masterpiece.” It was reported to cost about $350,000—more than $10 million in today’s dollars. Back in Arizona, Hermit’s Rest cost $13,000 to construct.

Hazel Wood was born in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1865 and moved to California with her family as a young child. She studied art at the University of California-Berkeley for a year before leaving after the 1882 – 1883 school year to marry Waldo Waterman.

The couple moved east of San Diego where Waldo managed his family’s gold mine. When the economic depression led to the sale of the mine in 1894, the Watermans relocated to San Diego. Owing to investments in railroads, they were able to hire architect Irving Gill to design a house that would overlook the San Diego Harbor for them and their three children. Working with Gill on the design of her home proved to be a turning point for Hazel Wood Waterman.

Implementing a diversity, equity, and inclusion policy is important, but creating a culture that fosters a sense of belonging for all workers is an essential practice. With 40 percent of employees feeling isolated at work and just 30 percent believing that their opinions matter, much remains to be done for everyone to feel included.

A sense of belonging is necessary for the well-being of employees, but it also benefits their companies. Disengaged employees are less productive and more likely to seek a better opportunity elsewhere. Citing research conducted by BetterUp, Evan W. Carr et al. write, “High belonging was linked to a whopping 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days.” At the same time, “[F]eeling excluded causes us to give less effort to the team.”

Expositions and world’s fairs played a significant role in the early career of decorator and architect Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958).

The 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia is considered the beginning of the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States. It helped create a market for hand-made objects at a time when mechanically-produced everyday items were readily available. By doing so, it opened doors for female artisans including Colter.

Juliet Peddle (1899 – 1979) designed and remodeled homes, schools, and commercial buildings, many of them in her hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana. Her father, a professor of machine design, taught Peddle mechanical drawing and photography to prepare her for a career in architecture.

Peddle graduated from the architecture program at the University of Michigan in 1922. Her student activities included serving as President of the T-Square Society, “a society of engineering and architectural women,” and as a member of the national honor society Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society in Architecture and Allied Arts. She was also president of her dormitory.

While many women face a broken rung on the ladder to leadership, mothers may face what researcher Joan C. Williams terms a “maternal wall.” She writes, “Women who have been very successful may suddenly find their proficiency questioned once they become pregnant, take maternity leave, or adopt flexible work schedules. Their performance evaluations may plummet and their political support evaporate. The ‘family gap’ yawns: An increasing percentage of the wage gap between men and women is attributable to motherhood.”

Motherhood can impact the type of projects assigned opportunities to advance in a firm, according to a 2021 AIA/ The Center for WorkLife Law investigation into bias in the architecture profession. “Mothers leave the architecture profession not only in search of work-life balance, but also because they feel their careers stalled out due to discrimination against mothers in the form of pay inequity, lack of opportunities, and assumptions about their priorities,” the same report found.

Architect and decorator Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) collaborated with many artists and craftspeople during long her long career with hospitality giant Fred Harvey. Among these were furniture makers, metal workers, and painters. Two artists who painted murals in spaces Colter designed in the 1930s are Fred Kabotie and Hildreth Meière.

Colter worked with Hopi artist Kabotie (1900 - 1986) for the first time at the Desert View Watchtower that she designed on the rim of the Grand Canyon in the early 1930s. Colter considered Kabotie to be “one of the three greatest modern Indian artists.” Since her building design for the Watchtower adapted elements of ancient ancestral Puebloan architecture from the region, Colter thought it fitting for Kabotie to decorate the tower’s walls. Kabotie later said he chose to paint the Snake Legend to show that the first man to float through the Grand Canyon was a Hopi.

Eleanor Raymond (1888 – 1989) became known for her modern residential designs and innovate use of materials and technologies during her more than fifty years of practice. She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and graduated from Wellesley College in 1909. After travelling around Europe, she returned to the Boston area where she took a course in landscape architecture. She began volunteering in her instructor’s landscape architecture office and in 1917 enrolled in the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture for Women. There her primary design interest shifted to domestic buildings.

In 1927 Raymond opened an office with her former architecture professor, and in 1935 she established her own architecture office in Cambridge. Although Raymond’s training was in the classical tradition, she gravitated toward modern design. She drew a link between vernacular architecture and modernism in her 1931 book Early Domestic Architecture of Pennsylvania: Photographs and Measured Drawings.