The new book focuses on the position of women in the architectural environment until 2000.

Prague – The new book Women in Architecture from 1945 to 2000, compiled under the leadership of architectural historian Klára Brůhová and curator Helena Huber-Doudová by a collective of expert authors, points out the inequalities between men and women in the architectural field. Especially before 1989, female architects had no chance to break into leading positions and join the ranks of major creators, the editors of the publication informed ČTK. The book edition of critical studies in a Czech-English language version published by Charles University Press Karolinum was supported by the National Gallery as part of a broader project Women in Architecture.

The personalities of individual female architects who worked in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic from 1945 to 2000 have already been mapped by the project. It includes 105 biographies, with interviews created for some of them, and information is available online.

In contrast, the book is not just a listing of creators. Architectural historian Klára Brůhová discusses "history without women" in her chapter. She pointed to the decreasing representation of women in leading and prestigious positions. They were absent in the leadership of studios, offices, design institutes, and in the leadership of the Architects' Union. According to Brůhová, they had no chance to slot into the contemporary canon of major creators.

"For example, until 1989, only one woman – Růžena Bartková – obtained a professorship in architecture in our country, in 1987 at the Brno University of Technology," Brůhová explained to ČTK. Women represented a third of the graduates of architectural fields.

"Women often sought their own path, which did not always align with the established images of a creative architect. Many female architects focused on research, heritage conservation, history and theory, architectural criticism, mediation, or smaller-scale works," Brůhová stated.

Women architects had to fight against the ingrained image of the male architect. According to Brůhová, this was evident in interviews published by the magazine Architekt even in the 1990s.

"While an interview with a male architect focuses exclusively on the professional aspect, the first question in an interview with a female co-author aims at how she manages to divide her time between projects and family care," Brůhová said. The image of an architect whose work is a vocation does not, according to her, correspond to societal perceptions of the role of women or to reality.

In addition to architectural historians, individual chapters of the book were written by sociologists and journalists. "The authors of the seven critical studies are women; it was an interdisciplinary team of seven researchers and one foreign contribution from Professor Mary Pepchinski," said Helena Huber-Doudová to ČTK, who is the curator of the architectural collection at the National Gallery.

Curator Huber-Doudová is preparing exhibitions on architecture for the National Gallery. She participated in the Venice Biennale of Architecture and in the exhibition of the Czech Centre in Berlin about the local embassy building designed by the couple Věra and Vladimír Machonin. Previously, she organized the exhibition "Do Not Demolish! The Faces of Brutalism in Prague" at the National Gallery.

Architectural historian Brůhová actively engages in some Prague issues, including the preparations for the reconstruction of the New Stage of the National Theatre, the transformation of Jiřího z Poděbrad Square, or the demolition of the brutalist Transgas building. She has several titles in the history of architecture to her name, including on unrealized projects in Prague.