Women in architecture have been documented for many centuries, as professional (or amateur) practitioners, educators and clients. Since architecture became organized as a profession in 1857, the number of women in architecture has been low. At the end of the 19th century, starting in Finland, certain schools of architecture in Europe began to admit women to their programmes of study. In 1980 M. Rosaria Piomelli, born in Italy, became the first woman to hold a deanship of any school of architecture in the United States, as Dean of the City College of New York School of Architecture. In recent years, women have begun to achieve wider recognition within the profession, however, the percentage receiving awards for their work remains low. As of 2023, 11.5% of Pritzker Prize Laureates have been female.
Early examples
Two European women stand out as early examples of women playing an important part in architecture, designing or defining the development of buildings under construction. In France, Katherine Briçonnet (–1526) was influential in designing the Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley, supervising the construction work between 1513 and 1521 and taking important architectural decisions while her husband was away fighting in the Italian wars. In Italy, Plautilla Bricci (1616–1690) worked with her brother, Basilio, and alone on chapels and palaces near Rome.
In Britain, there is evidence that Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham (1632–1705) studied the work of the Dutch architect Pieter Post as well as that of Palladio in Veneto, Italy, and the Stadtresidenz at Landshut, Germany. She has been put forward as the architect of Wotton House in Buckinghamshire and of many other buildings. It has also been suggested that she tutored Sir Christopher Wren. Wilbraham had to use male architects to supervise the construction work. There is now much research including that by John Millar to show she may have designed up to 400 buildings including 18 London churches previously attributed to her pupil Sir Christopher Wren.
Towards the end of the 18th century, another Englishwoman, Mary Townley (1753–1839), tutored by the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, designed several buildings in Ramsgate in south-eastern England including Townley House which is considered to be an architectural gem. Sara Losh (1785–1853) was an English woman and landowner of Wreay. She has been described as a lost Romantic genius, antiquarian, architect and visionary. Her main work is St Mary's Church (Wreay), Cumbria, but she also constructed various associated buildings and monuments.
Modern pioneers
Yet another Englishwoman, Sophy Gray (1814–1871), wife of Robert Gray who became bishop of Cape Town in 1847 assisted in helping her husband with his administrative and social obligations but above all by designing at least 35 of the South African Anglican churches completed between 1848 and 1880, all in the Gothic Revival style in which she showed strong interest.
The daughter of a French-Canadian carriage maker, Mother Joseph Pariseau (1823–1902) was not just one of the very earliest female architects in North America but a pioneer in the architecture of the north-western United States. In 1856, together with four sisters from Montreal, she moved to Vancouver, Washington, where she designed eleven hospitals, seven academies, five schools for Native American children, and two orphanages in an area encompassing today's Washington state, northern Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.
Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856–1913) from Waterloo, New York, was the first American woman known to have worked as a professional architect. In 1876, she took a job working as a draftsman in the office of Richard A. Waite and F.W. Caulkings in Buffalo, New York, where she worked for five years, demonstrating she could hold her own in what was a masculine profession. In 1881, she opened an independent office partnered with her husband Robert Bethune in Buffalo, earning herself the title as the nation's first professional female architect. She was named the first female associate of the American Institute of Architects (A.I.A.) in 1888 and in 1889, she became its first female fellow.