WHAT IMPACT DID THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT HAVE ON YOU AND YOUR COLLEAGUES?

Jane and I were just registered. We were working together in our first employment at Earl Flansburg and Associates after school, and Delores Hayden, who had just graduated from Harvard, gathered a group, Joan Sprague, Joan Goody, Sarah Harkness, Marilyn Toby, a few women who were interested in creating a group and being activists, and it was called Women in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Planning, WALAP. It was 1969, 70, and they sent out notices to every woman in Massachusetts, I think it wasn't even just Boston, including all the people who were secretaries, marketing people, anybody, all the women who were involved somehow in architecture, landscape architecture, and planning, to come to a meeting at the BAC, the kickoff meeting. A hundred women showed up, and it was breathtaking!

None of us had ever seen more than one or two other women at a time in our field, and it was extraordinary. The group was very active for perhaps five years. Jane and I were very active in it, doing all kinds of things. We wrote articles, we did exhibits. We agitated at the AIA to have a committee on women in architecture and considered agitating for better salaries, flexible work time.

We did a newsletter. And there were lots of discussions, small group discussion groups, and some older women would meet with some younger women, and those who were in practice alone and those who were working in firms, and all kinds of combinations of people met for a lot of support group discussions. So it was personal, it was professional, it was consciousness-raising, it was important. A lot of energy!

We built a base of colleagues, many of whom went on to be clients of ours later. That was a very important beginning in that respect. Many of whom went on to teach and then get the next generation of women teaching too... [We]advised each other on professional questions, resources, where to find things, so we supported one another in a lot of different ways. During that time was when, we were both working together, we had just gotten registered, it was 1970, that I came to the realization that for myself the most satisfying and rewarding path would be independent practice. And it was kind of a big leap; I had a scant amount of experience. But with my former husband I decided to give it a try.