“Women don’t negotiate” is one explanation given for the gendered salary gap. But this belief is a myth. For at least the past two decades, researchers Laura J. Kray, Jessica A. Kennedy, and Margaret Lee have found, “women negotiate for a higher salary more, not less, often than men….[O]ur data show women were paid significantly less, not more, than men, despite their attempts to negotiate.”

Blaming any part of the pay gap on women’s failure to negotiate is not only erroneous, it also inappropriately justifies the existing gender hierarchy. This can result in reduced support for policies that try to mitigate pay inequities, the researchers found.

When Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) first worked in an architect’s office in the late 1880s, architects routinely studied and drew on Renaissance, Neoclassical, and other architectural styles. Once Colter began creating her own designs several decades later, she also drew from the past. Instead of relying on European precedents, however, Colter was inspired by the architecture of the Ancestral Puebloan peoples in what became known as the United States.

In researching her design for the Desert View Watchtower at Grand Canyon, Colter spent six months traveling to heritage sites in the Southwest studying ancient structures, masonry patterns, and other architectural elements from the Ancestral Puebloans. She integrated some of these into her design for the Watchtower. She also commissioned Hopi artist Fred Kabotie to paint murals on the walls and ceiling of the Watchtower’s second floor. In this way, she reminded visitors of the continuity of Puebloan culture in the Grand Canyon region.

Florence Kenyon Hayden (1882 – 1973) was raised by and as a supporter of women’s rights. After her father died in 1892, her mother Kate Bemis Hayden moved her daughters from St. Louis to Columbus, Ohio. Kenyon (who dropped the “Florence” at a young age), her sister Gillette, and her mother became members of the National Woman’s Party and fought for passage of the 19th Amendment recognizing women’s right to vote.

Kenyon Hayden was one of three women enrolled in the architecture program at Ohio State University (OSU) in 1901. Although she didn’t finish her degree, she did impress campus architect and professor Joseph Bradford with whom she studied. Bradford recommended Hayden to design OSU’s first woman’s dormitory. In 1905 and 1906, newspapers across the nation reported on the award of this project to Hayden and two female colleagues, often under the heading “Built by Girl Architects.”

“Burnout” is defined by the World Health Organization as consisting of three simultaneous occupational experiences: exhaustion; disengagement or cynicism; and feeling ineffective, Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter write in Harvard Business Review (HBR). Across professions, more than 50 percent of workers say they feel burned out, researchers Emma Seppälä and Marissa King write in HBR.

While all workers are susceptible to burnout from chronic stress, some contributing factors disproportionately affect women. Owing to pervasive gendered stereotypes, women must outperform men to be considered equally competent, studies have found. In addition to having to work harder than men at their professional duties, women are also expected to take on more “office housework” that does not contribute to career advancement.

In 1890, when Mary E. J. Colter (1869 -1958) was young, just 54 percent of the school-aged population attended school at all and only 3.5 percent graduated from high school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The path to becoming an architect was also very different. University architecture programs existed and some admitted women; by 1891, twelve women had graduated with architecture degrees from US universities, scholar Mary N. Woods found. However, it was far more common for aspiring architects to get their training in an office than a university during this era. Of the 3,250 students entering architectural programs in the US from 1867 to 1898, only 650 of them earned their architectural degrees, Woods writes. With the US Census listing well over 10,000 architects working in 1900, it is apparent that most 19th-century architects received their training in offices rather than universities.

Colter was one of these who learned to practice architecture without earning an architecture degree. After graduating from St. Paul (Minnesota) High School in 1888, Colter moved to Oakland to attend the California School for Design (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute) across the bay where she studied drawing and decoration. While there, she worked for a San Francisco architecture firm. This experience appears to be her only formal training in architecture.

During her fifty-plus-year career as an architect, Lulah Maria Riggs (1896 - 1984) exhibited a strong talent for design, fulfilling her clients’ desires, and sensitivity to the environment. She spent most of her professional life in Santa Barbara, California, where she contributed to the development of a California style of modernism without ever adopting or being constrained by a style herself.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Riggs moved with her mother to Indianapolis after her father died. There she earned her high school degree at a manual training school in 1914. She moved with her mother to Santa Barbara and earned a certificate in architecture from a junior college in 1917. Riggs went on to study architecture at the University of California, earning her B.A. in 1919 and completing her architecture degree in 1920. With help from a scholarship, Riggs pursued graduate studies in architecture at Berkeley for another year and a half, until, she later wrote, “Family responsibilities necessitated quick exit—and getting to work.”

March 12 is Equal Pay Day in 2024. It represents how far into this calendar year women in the U.S. had to work to earn what men earned in 2023. Women across occupations earned 83 cents for each dollar earned by men, a Payscale report found. Women of color face even larger disparities in pay, Forbes reports.

In architecture, full-time female architects received just 83.2 percent of their male colleagues’ earnings, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2022. The same report shows female civil engineers earning 86.5 percent; female construction managers earning 91.3 percent; and female landscape architects earning 96 percent of what their male colleagues did.

When Mary Colter (1869 – 1958) designed the Desert View Watchtower at the Grand Canyon in the early 1930s, she integrated several sustainable features into the observatory and rest house. Although included for practical rather than environmental reasons, measures such as using locally extracted materials and salvaging demolition waste (see Reusing Materials: Colter’s 1932 Desert View Watchtower), using durable materials, moderating temperatures with thermal mass, and conserving water foreshadowed measures we consider sustainable today.

The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway began bringing travelers to Grand Canyon Village in 1901 and, with its hospitality partner Fred Harvey (Colter’s employer), offered dining, accommodation, and activities to visitors. In 1926, passengers arriving at the canyon in private automobiles outnumbered those arriving by train for the first time. The Desert View Watchtower was constructed near Grand Canyon National Park’s east entrance in part to serve visitors arriving by automobile.

The white father of Amaza Lee Meredith (1895 – 1984) was a skilled carpenter who taught his daughter drafting and model-making but discouraged her from pursuing her dream of becoming an architect, probably because he understood the barriers that a Black woman would face. Meredith’s Black mother imparted a faith in education in her daughter, and Meredith excelled in school and pursued a teaching career. Later in life, she did create opportunities to design and alter homes.

In 1912, Meredith attended a summer program at Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute to obtain her primary school teaching certificate. There she met Edna Colson, a college instructor six years older than Meredith who would later become her lifelong companion. Colson, scholar Jacqueline Taylor writes, “was an enthusiastic participant in the politics and practice of racial uplift, and she had a deep influence on Meredith’s career trajectory, guiding her and supporting her with pedagogical literature and advice.”

While all leaders might experience occasional loneliness, 53 percent of women report feeling lonely at work, researchers found, with higher rates at higher levels of seniority. Loneliness can increase health risks and lead to disengagement and other behaviors that can impact performance. While women often face discrimination and microaggressions at work, the odds of them doing so increase when they are the only woman, a 2019 McKinsey Quarterly study found.

Because of systemic gender biases, female leaders have to parse whether people are reacting to their behaviors or their identities, psychologist Mira Brancu writes in Psychology Today. “Therefore, in addition to navigating the usual challenges of leadership, there's an additional level of cognitive and emotional overload occurring internally for people with marginalized identities in leadership roles,” Brancu writes.

When Mary Colter (1869 – 1958) designed the Desert View Watchtower at the Grand Canyon in the early 1930s, she integrated several sustainable features into the observatory and rest house. Employed for practical or aesthetic rather than environmental reasons, salvaging and reusing material was one of these sustainable features.

The Desert View Watchtower is built on one of the highest points along the south rim of the Grand Canyon at an elevation 7,360 feet. Colter’s design challenge was to make the proposed building unobtrusive so as not to mar the natural surroundings while at the same time providing a tower for visitors to see across the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert beyond it.

“Enthusiasm for the rights of women has led two young feminists in New York to establish the first firm of its kind in existence--a firm of women architects,” the March 8, 1914 New York Times reported of the partnership of Anna Pendleton Schenck (1874 – 1915) and Marcia Mead (1879 – 1967). In fact, Schenck & Mead were not the first partnership of “girl architects” in New York City; Gannon & Hands had opened its doors there twenty years earlier.

Partners Schenck and Mead, who in the Times article were quoted as if they were one person, said “We feel that the movement for women has gone beyond the point of argument; the thing women must have now is the opportunity to try themselves.” Schenck received her architectural education by working in architectural offices and studying in France. Mead was the first woman to graduate from the Columbia University School of Architecture. She was well-known on campus as designer for the Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds.

“[W]omen and people of color are held to higher standards than white men in the profession of architecture,” the authors of the 2021 AIA/The Center for WorkLife Law investigation into bias found. To get the same level of respect or recognition, members of these underrepresented groups must work harder and longer than privileged white men. Study authors Joan C. Williams et al. found that within the architectural profession, about 42 percent of white women and 55 percent of women of color reported having to work twice as hard to receive the same level of recognition. This compares to 15 percent of white men.

This “prove-it-again” bias, in which women and members of other underrepresented groups must accomplish more to be judged as equal, is found across professions. Given the stereotypes endemic to our society, “Some groups must provide more evidence of competence to be seen as equally competent,” Williams et al. found. We link competence and maleness, another study found (DongWon Oh et al., 2018), leading to men being favored for advancement.  When unrecognized and uncorrected, bias can lead to unfair hiring, performance review, work assignment, promotion, and pay practices.

When future decorator and architect Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) was a child in St. Paul, Minnesota, a relative gave her family what she later described as “gifts from the Indians.” When word of a smallpox outbreak at the reservation reached the family, Colter’s mother feared the objects could communicate the disease to her children so she burned all the gifts. All that she found, that is.

Colter hid a group of drawings on lined paper under her mattress. “[I]t was not until many years later that my mother learned I still had them,” Colter later wrote. Colter remembered being told that these small drawings (approximately 3” x 5”) were made by (Lakota) Sioux prisoners at Fort Koegh in Montana. They were likely imprisoned for resisting the forcible taking of their lands by the US government, perhaps by fighting in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Inventor, builder, and artist Frances Gabe (1915 – 2016) channeled her impatience with housework into the design of a self-cleaning house. She started designing it in 1940, ended twelve years of building it herself in the 1980s, and received a patent for it in 1984. Gabe was the daughter of an architect and builder and was married to a builder for 35 years. She had a home-renovation business at one time, although she was also a talented ceramicist and jewelry-maker. Gabe’s goal with her self-cleaning house was to free up time for women to spend with their families and to allow elderly people and people with disabilities more autonomy, she told People magazine in 1982.

Gabe’s 1,000 square foot self-cleaning home has been described as a carwash or a giant dishwasher. Each room in the Newburg, Oregon house was designed with a sprinkler on the ceiling that sprayed water, with soap added to the plumbing system when needed. Surfaces were dried with jets of warm air. The wood floors were coated with multiple layers of marine varnish to protect them. The floors sloped a half inch per 10 feet to gutters at the room perimeters; water drained out through the fireplace and into the dog house, giving it (or its occupant) a wash as well. All items in the house were protected from water. For example, picture frames and book covers were water-tight, and furniture sat on castors and was upholstered with waterproof materials. The bedding and a rug were the only items that needed to be removed or protected before starting the house’s cleaning cycle.

When assessing candidates, employers consider not only a candidate’s qualifications for a position but also their potential commitment to it. This assessment varies with the gender of the candidate, researchers have found. Female candidates must be overqualified to be considered committed to their careers. In contrast, male candidates need only be qualified. In fact, overqualified male candidates are viewed as less committed to the potential employer, for they are expected to move on to a better opportunity after a short tenure.

This higher bar for employment for women is owing to stereotypes about gender that employers fall back on owing to the absence of applicant-specific data. These include the biased assumption that all women prioritize their family over their careers. Researchers also found that employers (like our society) expect women to act communally, prioritizing the best interest of the team over their personal ambitions. Prospective employers might also assume the overqualified female candidate is leaving her current firm for a “legitimate” reason like escaping gender bias rather than a desire to advance her career. Overqualified female employees are therefore are not considered a flight risk like their male counterparts.

In the late nineteenth century when Mary E. J. Colter entered the workforce, smoking was a masculine habit. Even proximity to smokers was considered disreputable for women. Where women were able to find work alongside men like at the US Patent Office, employers banned smoking in corridors and any rooms occupied by “lady employees” to protect their status and reputations. Some science and other professional associations used smoking etiquette to diminish or exclude their female members: they hosted professional dinners, after which the male members retreated to a smoking room to conduct business.

Smoking was not the only activity considered “unwomanly” in this era. Climbing ladders—a professional necessity for architects, among others—and dressing in pants also fell into this category. During her career as a decorator and architect in the early twentieth century, Colter (1869 – 1959) engaged in all of these so-called transgressions. She also used “delightfully salty” language and enjoyed alcoholic beverages.

Prior to—and largely after—her involvement in building the Brooklyn Bridge, Emily Warren Roebling (1842 – 1903) was best known as a club woman. In 1900, for example, Roebling received numerous mentions in the magazine of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, but just two referenced her work on the Brooklyn Bridge. One referred to the incapacitation of her husband, the bridge’s chief engineer, before writing, “He was able…to instruct Mrs. Roebling and she completed his plans so well that it was said, ‘His work was hardly missed, so magnificently was it done by his wife.’”

Col. Washington A. Roebling, a civil war veteran, had been appointed the project’s chief engineer in 1869 when his father John A. Roebling died after contracting tetanus during his work on the bridge. Washington Roebling was prepared for the position; he had studied caisson foundations in Europe and also worked closely with his father, who had considered his son indispensable to his work.

The most prevalent bias found in the architectural profession is tightrope bias, an AIA/The Center for WorkLife Law investigation found. Tightrope bias describes the balancing act women and minorities must play owing to societal expectations about dominance and assertiveness. “Women need to behave in masculine ways in order to be seen as competent—but women are expected to be feminine. So women find themselves walking a tightrope between being seen as too feminine to be competent, and too masculine to be likable,” Joan C. Williams, an expert on social inequality, writes in the Harvard Business Review.

This means that office politics are far more complex for women and minorities. In order to succeed, these groups need to expend more mental and emotional energy than white men. “White men just need to act competent and commanding, while members of other groups need to convey competence and leadership without triggering backlash fueled by the sense that they are behaving inappropriately—even when they do something that is readily accepted in white men,” the investigation’s authors write.

When Grand Canyon National Park was established in 1919, the National Park Service (NPS) inherited the buildings constructed prior to the park’s formation. Officials felt fortunate for what they came into at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. NPS landscape architect Charles Punchard reported finding “a certain degree of refinement and success in the design and location of structures already on the ground. The character of the building that was done under the direction of the railroad company and the Fred Harvey Co. was interesting and commendable.”

Two buildings designed by architect and decorator Mary E. J. Colter (1869 - 1958) were among those receiving accolades. They met the NPS’s competing missions of both leaving parklands “unimpaired” and providing the means for the public to enjoy the sites. By her use of rustic, native materials and integration of the structures with their sites in her 1914 designs for The Lookout and Hermit’s Rest, Colter anticipated the design priorities of the NPS which was established in 1916.