How Wide Is the Gap? Quantifying the (In)visibility of Women Architects in Modern Architecture Books Published in the Last Decade

In 1977, Susana Torre addressed the lack of documentation and representation of women’s design and built achievements in architectural histories. Is this gap still significant today? This paper provides a quantitative analysis of the documentation of women’s achievements in recent publications on modern architecture history. The ratios of female to male architects will be presented for the period of 1918 to 1945. The case studies examined are 10 modern architecture history books, accompanied by an index, published or re-printed in the last decade and available in Belgian university libraries. The first axis of inquiry concerns the quantification of architects who are attributed an individual and documented role in the history of architecture. By analyzing book indexes and counting the page citations, a female-to-male ratio of architects represented can be demonstrated. Thus, empirically measuring today’s documentation of woman modern architects within the discourse of modern architecture history. The second axis addresses the quantification of he, she, his, her and him pronouns employed in the discourse. This enables an evaluation of the extent to which gender pronouns refer to women architects: a quantification of the ideas, work and life of women described in such publications.status: submitte