Women In Design Edifice Of The Society

Women and men in the design professions are actively working alongside each other as never before, given the growing numbers of young women making headway into the field. The success and leadership of women in the design community need to be celebrated and encouraged. 

In this issue, women pioneers in the area of design and architecture, considered till very recently the predominant domain of men, interweave their personal and professional journey illustrating theircrucial role in not only shaping today’s spaces but also the future of design.

Women Architects of India: The Long Journey

– Madhavi Desai

Even as global interest in South Asian architecture increases in the context of mainstream modernist history and theory, scholars and practitioners in India continue to ignore the role and contribution of women in the discipline. From the historical viewpoint, it can be said that the long freedom struggle from the British imperial rule not only affected the stylistic characteristics of architecture, but also brought far reaching educational, social and political changes in the Indian society as a whole. Among other transformations, the status of women was impacted as they came out in the public space to participate in the independence movement in large numbers under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.

It is at this time that a small number of women began to take hesitant steps in the upcoming field of architecture as a few pioneers from elite families broke male bastions to go beyond the traditional confines of the era from the 1940's onwards. The careers of women architects nearly parallel the substantial development of architectural modernism in colonial and postcolonial India.