Niall,
Sometimes having a voice means knowing when to use it and when to not.
I feel Nicholas's website is something that shouldn't come from a male perspective.
It's made even tougher if this is a branding play to brand yourself as a female focused architect. When there are great female architects. If you are playing that game we as young male architects are starting from a step behind in that space.
Not saying we can't or shouldn't design for all players. But if we are talking about Women's friendly golf, I can't really talk about it as a non woman because there are lots of things that as a man I don't experience.
Like notice how Christine talks about bathrooms a lot in her interviews with men. It's because that's a simple example that men often ignore when talking about a female experience in golf.
This whole thread has been men talking about their experiences and not one other than myself has probably engaged with this issue enough to understand. It reeks of male privilege to impose ideas onto the women's game without holding space for and opening comment to women.
If this thread was about designing or building courses for men or women. The gender of the architects shouldn't really matter as Christine and Angela have pointed out numerous times. But this thread isn't about that.
This thread is about a man imposing as system for rating courses friendliness to women. Which is completely overstepping. I was hesitant to comment because in doing so I bump the thread and bring light to this dumb idea. If he had female cofounders or other directors maybe but even then. This isn't our space as men to talk.
If we want to build better courses for more people we have to open our minds and listen. Speaking isn't the most important skill in architecture, Listening is.
Ben
It's too late in the evening to try and respond point by point but there's a lot in your post which I think should be challenged. Unless I'm mistaken the basic idea that you seem to have that men aren't qualified to design a course for women, presumably on the basis that men gca's don't play like your average woman and therefore don't have their perspective. If you followed that logic then Dr MacKenzie (9 handicap) was wasting his time designing a course that would be used every year for one of the men's majors, and that the likes of Tom Doak (also about a 9 hcp I believe) and Robin Hiseman (6 or 7 hcp ?) had no business designing courses that used by the professional tours. And yet they did, very successfully. I'd suggest they were able to do so, not by being able to play like a top professional, but by observing how top professionals played and by using their skill as gca's.
In terms of Nicholas's accreditation idea I also dislike it but not because Nicolas is overstepping. He has every right to promote his ideas and I don't see them being any less valid because he's a man. He doesn't need a female cofounder (?) to validate those ideas. Those ideas should be considered on there own merit rather than on who is presenting them.
Niall
ps. in terms of your comments in post #41, I'd refer you back to post #17 for design ideas other than length.