No less an authority than the British Medical Journal has made the point that “the political economy of Covid-19”—the way in which the pandemic has been governed throughout the world—“reflects longstanding patterns of resource extraction linked to racial discrimination, marginalisation, and colonialism”.
Parlour’s intersectional approach might thereby be considered right on time. “Our aims are equity, diversity, inclusion, ethical practice—good business practice, which enables ethical
practice,” says Professor Stead. “We say you’ve got to see those things as interrelated.” Within this, sustainability of the planet is the “existential question” that underlies all Parlour’s activities4
,
which began as a research project on women in architecture and now takes in research, online content, and regular gatherings, addressing issues such as architectural ethics and generating more equitable, diverse and inclusive communities within the profession and better work practices.
Stead tells FuturArc that Parlour has also started to consider how to make architecture practices more financially viable, “as we all know, more financially viable means that they are more equitable, diverse, inclusive and also more likely to stay in business.”
“We have to have a world in which to work,” says Stead. “There’s no gender equity on a dead planet.” FLEXIBLE WORK/LIFE SPACES
One of the major shifts required for intersectional gender equity pertains to the world of work: the domestic division of labour, women’s access to the professions, and the elusive work/life balance. As ‘Six myths about women in architecture’5
, a document authored by Parlour co-founder Justine Clark in 2014,
notes, “There are many factors that build one on top of each other to make things very difficult for many women in architecture. These include: long hours, poor workplace cultures, and poor part-time and flexible work options.” They are the result of the sexist assumption that women do not really belong in the paid workforce and that it is untenable to combine ‘home duties’ such as parenting and household management with a professional career.
Then came the Covid-19 pandemic and the overriding imperative to protect public health. Flexible working arrangements became mandatory for much of the world in 2020. Space for domestic and professional work shrank, overlapped, disappeared; lounge rooms became classrooms; in many parts of the world, women left the paid workforce in droves to labour unpaid at home.
Chee reflects that, in Singapore during the pandemic, the small size of homes and intergenerational nature of the family unit has presented particular challenges around working from home, especially for women who “now have to home-school children and take care of the elderly”, as well as their jobs.
“We’ve heard of women who wake up at 3am to work so that after 6am, they can be there for the family and then at 8.30am they are ready for their work meetings; they get just four hours sleep.”
At the same time, for many women workers—part-timers, contractors, home-workers—the transition was easier or non-existent.
“The pandemic has shifted a whole lot of the assumptions around flexible work as just being for mothers,” says Clark. “In many practices where there was resistance [to flexible work], there no longer is since the pandemic.”
“Disentangling flexible work from gender—destigmatising it—is a really important part of making it viable for everybody.”
Indeed, flexible working arrangements, often previously confined in discourse to ‘a women’s issue’, entered a new shared reality and as cities open back up, professions are pondering making permanent some of the work-from-home measures put in place for the pandemic.
LABOUR AND MATERIALS
The pressure on women in households is just one indication of the need to rethink the systems that support working and living, says Chee, pointing to the consumer basis of Singapore’s national economy.
“We import many things, including foreign labour for construction. Inevitably, such labour is treated as a disposable resource, for extraction,” she observes, considering the case of Singapore’s migrant dormitories.
Lilian Chee Justine Clark
Naomi Stead
FUTURARC 15
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