Even for a white collar profession, architecture has an abysmal record when it comes to women being well represented in the top echelons.

Law, medicine and accounting are not particularly shining examples either, but when the statistics show women make up about 40 per cent of architecture students and less than 1 per cent of directors at architectural firms, there must be something going wrong.

There are no doubt similar problems for women in all these professions, such as juggling work and other commitments and keeping a career going in inflexible structures. But that isn’t enough to express the painfully slow progression of women in architecture.

The question so concerned Paula Whitman, an architect and academic at Queensland University of Technology, that she made a formal effort to find out what was happening.

As she watched the swelling ranks of women architecture students and talked to her peers, she sensed a very different attitude to work and career was contributing to the statistics.

Earlier this year, she sent out a national survey to women members of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, and got more than 500 responses.

The findings were not only revealing but also surprising, and backed up some of the anecdotal evidence Whitman had been hearing. On several occasions she had been told directorships were offered to women but they knocked them back.

“I found a quarter of respondents had that experience and I thought ‘what the heck is going on?’” she says.

“The (male) directors look at that and think there is something dysfunctional about the women, and it never strikes them that there might be something dysfunctional about the role.”

The women, meanwhile, were seeing the compromises required by working at that level in the big practices, she says. About 60 per cent of those surveyed have declined offers to take more senior roles within practices because they had different career aspirations, and more than 50 per cent said the promotion “would not give them increased satisfaction in their work”.

But most of them were not aiming to opt out or switch careers.

“Two thirds said their major goal was to set up their own practice and then hoped to control their life better,” Whitman says. “I don’t know if small practice is the answer, but there’s a perception it will allow them autonomy.”

For Catherine Baudet, a director of Brisbane architecture firm Ferrier Baudet, and the mother of teenagers, running her own practice had been satisfying but hard work.

The fact she is part of such a tiny group of women who have become directors of firms is “staggering”, she says, but there are a few reasons for the slow change.

“It’s such a labour-intensive profession there’s a big drop-out rate.” And there were not that many women in her age group who became architects (she graduated in 1979). The years when her children were young, she admits, were spent in a tricky balancing act.

“I juggled for a couple of months and went back to work and put them in child care. It’s not easy.”

The hours required in most firms are well understood by women, with 70 per cent of architects who are parents reporting that the impact on their careers of caring for their children had been significant.

Many had taken breaks from their jobs (63 per cent) and nearly 70 per cent were willing to give up career progression for more balance in their lives.

Most of the women love their work, Whitman says, ad the level of satisfaction with the practice of architecture is very high, although she notes that the respondents were all members of the RAIA and thus perhaps more likely to be enthusiastic.

One of the keys for women seeking a career, Baudet says, is having resources, including access to child care and enough income. And she sees a potential change coming from the next group of women architects.

“I think we are just seeing the crest of the wave and it will be interesting to see if they take up senior roles as their children get older. I’m hopeful because I think that once that happens, you will see big change in the way the profession operates.”

It’s important not only because there are so many talented women working in architecture, but also because the demand for architectural skills from a design-conscious public is growing, Baudet says.

“Women bring a sensitivity and different way of doing things. Not just in the product but in the process.”

Whitman says some of the more enlightened firms – including Woods Baggot and Bligh Voller Nield – are making progress on changing structures to encourage more women directors.

“There’s something about architecture; it’s called the task discipline. It’s not something that can be done in six months and it often takes three years to get something done in architecture.

“If you have a stop-start career and a portfolio rather than climbing the ladder, it’s hard to be around long enough to get the jobs done that a career is built on. It’s one of the challenges for women.”