The conventional history of architecture has made many women invisible.

Women's engagement in architecture has a long history, and the form of such participation has varied greatly depending on time, place, and tradition. Women have played major roles in the creation of both large and small structures as patrons, architects, engineers, managers, and muses. Women have had significantly less latitude to create the built environment than men. Until the late nineteenth century, women were largely barred from working as architects due to patriarchal societal structures across the world. This absence is maybe unsurprising, but what is startling is the extent to which the profession has resisted efforts to achieve balance.

Despite this opposition, women's participation in shaping the built environment has taken many forms, and elite women in positions of political power have had a significant impact on the architecture of their period. Hatshepsut, the Egyptian pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, for example, used architecture to legitimize and establish her reign.

Women's history as key architectural designers is a relatively recent one. Women have battled to overcome existing limits and be equal participants in the production of space and location since the professionalization of architecture in many nations in the nineteenth century. The formalization of architecture as a profession, together with the training and licensing requirements that accompanied it, generated both new opportunities and new barriers for women to function as principal designers of the built environment.

Architects, historians, and critics have been working hard to eliminate gender prejudice in the discipline, and these efforts are still ongoing. In fact, discussions about women in architecture have also shed light on other under-appreciated or misunderstood issues in the field of architectural production: structural inequalities that have resulted in an imbalance of race, class, and gender within the practice of architecture; the high cost and difficulty of architectural education; and, finally, the complex nature of collaboration and creativity in architectural firms, in which any individual's contribution is valued. In the next years, it appears that a more extensive and inclusive acknowledgment of the creative process behind the creation of every aspect of the built environment will be a field-wide job.

The women who broke the glass ceiling in the field of architecture, establishing successful careers and designing some of the world's most admired landmark buildings and urban settings are- (only a few renowned women are listed, amongst many others) 

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid, who was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1950, was the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the top accolade in architecture (2004). Hadid's enthusiasm to experiment with new spatial notions can be seen in even a small sample of her work. Her parametric designs may be seen in a variety of sectors, including architecture, urban planning, and product and furniture design.

Denise Scott Brown

Prior to meeting architect Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown had already made significant contributions to the area of urban design. Scott Brown's studies and teachings have affected the present understanding of the link between design and society, despite the fact that Venturi received the Pritzker Architecture Prize and is more well-known.

Neri Oxman

Visionary Israeli-born Neri Oxman used the phrase "material ecology" to characterize her fascination in organic forms in architecture. She doesn't just imitate these features in her design; she genuinely includes biological factors into the process. The buildings that arise are "really alive."

Anupama Kundoo

Anupama Kundoo is an award-winning and globally recognized architect who began her work in Auroville in 1990. She developed and built various energy and water-efficient infrastructure upgrades throughout her twelve years at Auroville. For her thesis, "Urban Eco-Community: Design and Analysis for Sustainability," Anupama received the Vastu Shilpa Foundation Fellowship in 1996. Anupama's approach to building design is focused on environmental research and material research.

Shimul Javeri Kadri

Shimul Javeri Kadri has won a number of prestigious architecture honors, including the Future Arc Green Leadership Award for the Nirvana Films Office in Bengaluru. She is the founder of SKJ Architects in Mumbai, and Architectural Digest has named her one of the Top 50 Architects in the world. Kadri's idea is to design structures that are in harmony with nature, such as employing natural elements like as sunshine, wind, and natural materials.

 Brinda Somaya

Brinda Somaya is an Indian architect and urban environmentalist who helped to rebuild Bhadli, an earthquake-devastated hamlet in Gujrat. She is the creator of Somaya and Kalappa Consultants, and her designs are noted for their traditionality as well as their long-term viability. Nalanda International School in Vadodara, Goa Institute of Management in Goa, Birla Institute Of Technology and Sciences in Pilani, and TCS House in Mumbai are just a few of her famous works.

The contribution of these women is internationally acclaimed, including a female Indian architects renowned in the feild of architecture.

In the twenty first century when the gender system is gradually being challenged and restructured, there is a crisis in feminine as well as masculine identities. The society needs to respond to both. Public transport, public toilets and design issues like good lighting, footpaths and location of neighborhood parks have to be integrated in architectural and planning programs of cities. Conducting safety audits from a gender viewpoint should be a regular feature. As real estate prices boom and mass housing dominates the market, there is a great danger of gender considerations getting lost in the economics of urban land. 

The contemporary, globalizing landscape is full of new spaces of consumption such as shopping malls and multiplexes which should to be analyzed from the gender angle. We also need to study other building types such as offices and public institutions as more and more women join the workforce. It is not sufficient to respond to the existing social set up but we need to integrate services such as crèches, childcare centers, convenient shopping and community kitchens to provide facilities for working women. We need to review the attitudes and assumptions through built spaces are designed, to move towards a more inclusive city.