TWELVEINCHTEESQUARE: Thoughts on Retirement

Friday, August 3, 2007

Thoughts on Retirement

Women & Co a company created by Citigroup came to our office to speak to a group of young female designers about financial planning and taking control of their finances. Also on the panel were Heidi Blau, a principal of the 175 person architecture firm FX Fowle and Sarah Caples, a partner of Caples Jefferson Architects. They shared with us their experiences as women who have been in the architecture profession for the last 30 years.

Average Age of Widowhood: 55 Years
Average Age of Retirement, Women:
Average Lifespan, Women: 81 Years
Average Lifespan, Men: 73 Years
Average Years out of the Workforce, Men: 1 Year
Average Years out of the Workforce, Women: 11.5 Years
Projected Retirement Income: 90% of Pre-Retirement Income

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The Good Fight

Now, more than ever, there are fewer rules to being female. Fewer guidelines that make clear what is feminine, what is acceptable and what is successful. We at TWELVEINCHTEESQUARE believe that there is liberation in that ambiguity. We believe that beauty and innovation come out of contradiction. We believe that as designers, we can be, all at once, feminists, daddy's girls, mothers and activists. We believe that if the world which we want to inhabit doesn't exist, then it is up to us to create it, to design it, to figure out a better way.We are of a generation that was raised on optimism, dot com promises, trickle down economics and the belief that we can and will do anything. We were raised to believe that we are men's equals. That the women who came before us - our mothers, our aunts, our grandmothers - fought the good fight for us and passed down to their daughters the promise of a better life. We were molded to believe in a dream - to believe that we were born into a world where women can "have it all." That if we choose to put our minds to it, at our fingertips are: groundbreaking careers, stable marriages, a houseful of children and the ability to carry it all off with a Martha Stewartian air of perfect dinner parties and coordinated towels. However, the burden of being female in the 21st century hasn't been lessened; it was expanded by this progress and by our entrance into professional society. We are now just as likely to be judged for the degrees listed after our last names as for the cleanliness of our bathroom floors. And so, the mantle of responsibility that our predecessors have passed down to us is choice. Seemingly limitless opportunities for advancement, diversification and progress have been handed to us. We are "Generation Y-ers." We are team oriented, naturally collaborative, more likely to take initiative, less sensitive to organizational constructs and often compelled to reach out across boundaries. So here we are: reaching out. We are a generation of intelligent, beautiful, open-minded young women who have been asked to navigate a complex, unclear and sometimes discouraging world. There is nothing to be gained from shifting the responsibility of the uncertainty of our position to our brothers, financees, husbands, fathers and friends. There is nothing to be gained from demonizing men. It is up to us, in the face of what is sometimes an oppressive amount of choice, to stand together and unravel what is chivalrous and what is chauvinistic. We are designers committed to achieving in our work a balance and beauty, which we find difficult at best, to design into our own lives. TWELVEINCHTEESQUARE supports women who are living the duality of hard-ass creative genius and the reality of being everything else that is typically female.

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Friday, August 3, 2007

Thoughts on Retirement

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The Good Fight

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