Contract Magazine - February/March 2020 - 22

VIEWPOINT

Does Interior Design Have a Gender Problem?
Yes, it does, and it may not be what you think...
old-fashioned counting, looking at 11 of the largest
interior design firms' websites (after eliminating
other disciplines such as architecture, planning,
and support).
Thirty-three percent of these large firms' partners
or principals are female; 67 percent are male. The
statistics are almost exactly the mirror image of the
percentages of women and men in the profession.
In order to get a snapshot of the makeup of leadership
for product and manufacturing companies, I looked at
six of the largest furniture companies that are publicly
traded (so their leadership information is available
online). The numbers are even worse:

Look around the room at any interior design
industry event and you will see a sea of mostly
female faces. It certainly appears that the industry
skews largely toward women, and that is borne out
by statistics. According to Data USA, the percentage
of women awarded interior design degrees within
the five largest undergraduate programs in the
country was 89.7 percent in 2016. The National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES) puts
the number of female graduates nationwide even
higher, reporting 93.6 percent in 2018.

So the question you might ask is "Where are the men?"
In contrast, the speakers, panelists, and awardees at
those same industry events trend much more toward
being male. For example:
*	 Over the past 40 years, 65 percent of the Contract
Designer of the Year winners have been male.
*	 Over the past 30 years, 75 percent of the Interior
Design Hall of Fame members have been male.
*	 While ASID and IIDA fellows are a little more than
half female, they do not mirror the percentage
of women in the profession.
*	 Forty-three percent of presenters/panel
participants at NeoCon 2019 were male.
(Interestingly, most panels were largely female,
and most single presenters were male. That could
be the topic for another essay!)
What about firm leadership? There don't appear
to be any statistics out there right now, so I did some
22

Firm

CEO

% Female
Board of
Directors

1

Male

33 %

0%

2

Male

44 %

31 %

3

Male

17 %

0%

4

Female

40 %

0%

5

Male

33 %

0%

6

Male

20 %

0%

Averages

17 %

31 %

5%

% Female
C-Suite

Of the six companies, only one had a female CEO, and
that firm didn't have any other women in the C-suite.
The percentage of C-suite women at the six
companies was 5 percent.
An industry that starts off as approximately 90
percent female ends up with far fewer women as
leaders. This differs from architectural practice, which
had a much smaller pipeline of women entering the
profession and only recently has reached a graduation
rate approaching parity at 42 percent female,
according to the National Architectural Accrediting
Board. As mentioned above, there is a much larger
percentage of women starting out in the interior
design profession, making the drop-off in percentage
of women holding leadership positions even more
striking. What happens to all that talent? Do women
stall out in midcareer, never advancing beyond
midlevel positions? Do they drop out, and if so, why?
(The fact that the graduation rate is 90 percent
female but the industry as a whole is only 70 percent
female seems to say a lot of them leave.) Do they
form their own (largely residential) firms? Or do they
do something else entirely?
At the moment, there are apparently no quantitative
statistics and no qualitative surveys. This is in contrast

to the situation in architecture; after a big ruckus and
the #MeToo movement, the AIA now collects gender
information for its members. It also has sponsored
large-scale detailed studies such as the latest Equity
by Design survey, which seeks to find out what
happens to architecture graduates (male and female)
in mid- and late career and why. (Its most recent
survey covered 14,000 respondents.)
If in fact women are not making it into leadership
positions, understanding the reasons why would
help to address the issue and level the playing field.*
What can be done?
The first goal would be to establish a baseline
of numbers, thus confirming (or refuting) that there
is a gender imbalance, one that is clearly not a pipeline
issue. The second goal would be to try to parse out
what happens to women as they move through the
trajectory of their careers. The industry starts out with
90 percent women graduates, dropping down to
about 70 percent of practitioners and vendors who
actually stay in the field, dropping down again to about
30 percent of actual leaders of firms, and dropping
even further to less than 20 percent of leaders of
product companies.
Only after we understand through hard data whether
there are impediments preventing women from making
it to the top of the profession and, if so, what is causing
them can there be a meaningful and impactful effort
to make sure that there will be fairness and equity for
all who enter the profession, regardless of gender.
*For the purpose of simplicity, I have not addressed
the obstacles faced by both men and women of color
or nonbinary gender here. These are factors that
almost certainly would affect career trajectories and
should be included in any surveys.
Joan Blumenfeld, Contract magazine's 2018
Legend, is a design principal at Perkins and Will,
a global architecture and interiors firm. Over the
past 20 years she has been committed to achieving
gender equity across all aspects of the design and
construction business, as well as being an active
advocate for building better and healthier interiors,
buildings, and communities. Her widely published
and award-winning work is notable for
incorporating socially responsible principles
of designing for health and susainability.

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