A multilevel conceptual framework for navigating gendered career trajectories in the architectural profession

Gender inequalities in careers often unfold gradually. Whilst individual events are important, longitudinal studies of careers offer insight into how gendered advantage and disadvantage can accumulate and compound over time. This article describes a novel multilevel conceptual framework for understanding gender in architectural career trajectories. It integrates three conceptual theories: gendered life course perspective, feminist institutionalism and concepts of cumulative advantage and disadvantage. Applying this framework to a longitudinal case study of the Australian architecture profession illuminates the complex interplay of enduring informal norms, historical legacies, and entrenched power dynamics operating within a large architecture firm. It highlights how organisational practices and gendered actors shape work in ways that create lasting gendered effects, limiting women’s career progression while reinforcing men’s advantage. Taken together, these findings reveal that gender inequality in architecture is not episodic but cumulative, driven by persistent informal norms and allocation practices that create path-dependent trajectories. Despite policy reforms, these deeply embedded rules reproduce male advantage and constrain women’s progression across the life course, demonstrating the resilience of gendered institutions over time.