"The Girls"

As Minx Directors, we have always been known as “The Girls”. This year one of us turned 50. It didn’t seem to matter much - we are still referred to as “the girls”.

This makes us think that it may not be attributed to our youthful appearances, but perhaps more to our gender.

Emerging as female Architects in the 90’s, often we found ourselves the only “girl” in the office (other than the receptionist or the interior designer).

Often the only “girl” on a building site, we made our contractors uncomfortable, chivalrous and uncharacteristically well mannered at the same time. - “Fuck, er ‘scuse me….”

Today's female Graduate Architects are unlikely to ever experience the same extraordinary insight into a pre-equality existence. Our graduating year was the first to have equal representation of the sexes, our office has equal numbers of males and females and we are increasingly seeing more females in construction roles.

Perhaps we are still a rarity as female company directors, actually we must be - or no one would know who “The Girls” were.

We just wonder if at 60, 70 or 80 we will still be known as “The Girls”?

Hopefully, but only because of our youthful appearances. By then there will be so many other “girls”, it would just be confusing otherwise.