BEYOND THE GLASS CEILING

Four women from diverse professions on how they navigate gender biases and discrimination to carve a niche for themselves.

- GEETIKA SACHDEV

ABHA NARAIN LAMBAH

Conservation Architect

Abha Narain Lambah's journey in architectural conservation began three decades ago, when she graduated from the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Delhi. As someone who has been instrumental in giving a new lease of life to multiple historic buildings, including the Bikaner House (Delhi) and David Sassoon Library and Reading Room (Mumbai), she gained confidence to have a seat at the table during her days at the institute.

While the gender ratio in her classroom was heavily skewed, the environment was rather liberal-which is what broadened her mind at a young age.

"The girls to boys ratio was miserable; it was probably 1:10. But we also had a co-ed hostel with no warden; there were no questions asked. It opened up my mind that there can be an equal world," she recalls.

Like every architecture course, her reading list included Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. Here, the central protagonist is a tall, strapping and masculine architect-Howard Roark-who defies conventional norms of the trade.

Abha remembers asking herself why couldn't Roark be a woman?

"I think that's why I chose to initiate a women-led practice. I also chose not to marry an architect. Defying each of these norms was a conscious decision," she reiterates.

In her practice, she has always pushed her boundaries, and never let being a 'woman' get in the way of her dreams. Most architects begin their journey with residential or interior projects; Abha's first was an urban streetscape project of Dadabhai Naoroji road in Mumbai.

"I have worked at sites and remote villages-even at an altitude of 11,000 feet in Ladakh. I have worked on a site in a village in Anegundi-the only way to get there was through a bamboo coracle on the Tungabhadra river [in Karnataka]," she tells Bazaar India.