Parlour data bank

Women have been present in Australian architecture from the very beginning, with numbers steadily climbing over time. Now everyone can explore detailed data for two important measures. The Parlour data bank makes consolidated, clean data on registration and graduation easily available for the first time. Access detailed spreadsheets of state-by-state graduation data from 1987 and registration data from 1924!

Much of Parlour’s advocacy and impact is grounded in the careful, consistent collection and analysis of data by Dr Gill Matthewson, undertaken since 2011. Assembling this data is a lot of work. It involves digging into all sorts of sources, cross-checking them, and digging some more. Given the labour involved, we thought it important to share what we have so that everyone can draw on it.

Gill began this data collection, with Kirsty Volz, as part of her PhD undertaken as part of the research “Equity and Diversity in the Australian Architecture Profession: Women, Work and Leadership (2011–2014). Led by Dr Naomi Stead, this Australian Research Council-funded Linkage Project has had significant impacts, including the development of the Australian Institute of Architects Gender Equity Policy and National Committee for Gender Equity, not to mention Parlour itself.

One of the aims of the project was to map the participation of women in architecture. Counting women also involved the counting of everybody. As a result, Gill developed the most comprehensive data on the profession assembled at that time. This underpinned Parlour‘s work and advocacy from the beginning. This work continued through the regular analysis of the Australian Censuses, published in the Parlour Census Report 2001–2021: Gender & diversity in Australian architecture and the Parlour Census Report 2001–2016.

Refer to the summary charts below and access the full spreadsheets, including state data, via the buttons beneath the charts. For details of the data sources, limitations and credits, see below.

Note: The data sources accessed mostly treat gender as a binary. More recent data from some boards of architects now includes a larger range of gender identities. For example, in the 2020s the NSW Architects Registration Board data includes “I” to refers to “= Indeterminate / Intersex / Unspecified”. Refer to the full spreadsheets for this data.

Click on the button beneath the summary chart to access the consolidated spreadsheet of graduation data by year and state, including data on local and international students. The data is for those graduating with a professional degree (5 year BArch or the more recent 2-year MArch).

Proportion of women graduates, 1987–

Click on the button beneath the summary chart to access the consolidated spreadsheet of registration data by year, state and gender. Data from the early years was compiled by Julie Willis and Paula Whitman. Later data is compiled by Gill Matthewson and Kirsty Volz. Note, as outlined below, the difficulties of accessing some registration data means that there is not a continuous record of registration data, and some data is approximate.

Proportion of women registered architects, 1924–

Graduation data 

The graduation data comes from the following sources:

Architecture Schools of Australasia, 1988 to 2015 editions

Australian Institute of Architects National Office

The data from these publications was initially collated by Kirsty Volz, the research assistant on the Linkage project. It was then cross-checked and supplemented by Gill Matthewson – this included adding international students and correcting / cleaning some mistakes in the original record. This consolidated and cleaned data was published in Gill Matthewson, “The Gendered Attrition of Architects in Australia.” arq: Architectural Research Quarterly 21, no. 2 (2017): 171–182.

Architectural Education and the Profession in Australia and New Zealand, 2019

Architects Accreditation Council of Australia

Report on research led by Alex Maroya with Dr Gill Matthewson and Dr Louise Wallis.

Annual Report on Accredited Architecture Programs in Australia

Architects Accreditation Council of Australasia

The AACA has taken up the baton for counting graduates in these annual publications from 2018 onwards.

Registered architects data

Counting registered architects in Australia is very difficult, with a lot of problems. Each state and territory has its own register. In some states, data is easily accessible; in others, it’s not.

Many people are registered in more than one state. A 2012 analysis of the registers by Gill Matthewson found duplicates accounted for approximately 13% of the active registers; 6% of the women’s entries were multiples, compared with 17% of the men’s. This means that the proportion of women is conservative and likely to be higher overall than the figures we are showing (sorting through duplicates is even harder than the separate state counts so we have not attempted that again).

Some states separate out non-practising from practising within the data; others do not. Where possible, we count practising only because this provides a more accurate count of architects working in Australia.

These difficulties mean that there is not a continuous record of registration data.   

Historic sources for registration numbers

Julie Willis, A Statistical Survey of Registered Women Architects in Australia (Adelaide: University of South Australia, 1997).

Paula Whitman, Going Places: The Career Progression of Women in the Architectural Profession (Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology, 2005). Research supported by the RAIA and QUT.

Current sources for registration numbers 

AACA, Annual Report: Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (Sydney: AACA).  

Australian Capital Territory – ACT Open Data Portal. Register downloaded and gender assigned by name and Google search (imprecise).

New South Wales – NSW Architects Registration Board, Annual Reports. This count splits by age, gender and practising and is best practice in Australia. 

Northern Territory – Northern Territory of Australia, Government Gazette (now online), gender assigned by name and Google search (imprecise).

Queensland – Board of Architects of Queensland online register. Downloaded, gender assigned through supplied title (Mr, Mrs, etc) up to 2022. For data after this date, gender assigned by name and Google search (imprecise), or by cross-checking with the 2022 register.

South Australia – Architectural Practice Board of South Australia, Annual Reports.

Tasmania – Board of Architects of Tasmania online register. Downloaded and gender assigned by name and Google search (imprecise). 

Victoria – Architects Registration Board of Victoria online register. Downloaded and gender assigned by name and Google search (very imprecise); only practising is counted.

Western Australia – Architects Board of Western Australia, Annual Reports (count includes non-practising).

This data is for reference use. It has been compiled from a number of sources, some of which are more reliable than others. It is as accurate as we can make it but we hold no responsibility for any errors.
If you identify any errors, please contact us at hello@parlour.org.au