When Kimberly Dowdell becomes president of the American Institute of Architects next month, her ascent will be noteworthy. Ms. Dowdell, an architect in a profession that is overwhelmingly white and male, is a Black woman, the first to fill the post in the group’s 166-year history.

African Americans make up 13.6 percent of the U.S. population, but only 1.8 percent of licensed architects in the country are Black, according to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. Fewer than a quarter of the nearly 120,000 licensed architects in the United States are women, and not even one half of 1 percent of architects are Black women.

Black female architects are so few and far between, and obtaining licensure is such a point of pride among them, that many take pains to note their place in the chronology of advancement in the field — Ms. Dowdell, 40, said that in 2013, she became the 295th living Black woman to be licensed in the United States.

There are small signs of change: Nearly 3 percent of architects who received their license last year were Black, and 43 percent of new architects were women.

“We’re working on moving the needle but will need at least a decade,” said Ms. Dowdell, who is the director of strategic relationships at the design firm HOK and is based in Chicago. She pointed out that it could take 10 years or longer to obtain an architecture degree, fill a work experience requirement and pass licensure exams to become a registered architect.

Yet progress toward racial and gender equity in the profession is by no means guaranteed, especially now that the Supreme Court has rolled back affirmative action in college admissions. Some say there has been backpedaling on diversity efforts that companies trumpeted after the Black Lives Matter protests.

“There’s always been a backlash to Black progress,” said Sharon Egretta Sutton, 82, a distinguished visiting professor at the Parsons School of Design in New York — and the 12th Black female licensed U.S. architect.

Still, the visible presence of a Black woman atop the A.I.A., which has more than 96,000 members, is an achievement in and of itself and perhaps an inspiration to others, Ms. Dowdell said. “Representation matters,” she added.

The design professions help shape what is built in this country, and architecture is not the only one lacking diversity.

Of licensed landscape architects, only 0.8 percent are Black and 0.3 percent are Black women, said Matt Miller, chief executive of the council that administers the Landscape Architect Registration Examination. Thirty-nine percent of landscape architects are female.

Interior design has a reverse gender gap: There are vastly more women than men in the field partly because for decades women were not considered up to the rigors of architecture and were steered to interiors instead.

Only around 1.5 percent of practitioners are Black, said Cheryl S. Durst, the chief executive of the International Interior Design Association.

The proportion of Black architects is significantly below the share of Black professionals in other fields requiring intensive study and rigorous exams. More than 6 percent of lawyers in the United States are Black, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The dearth of Black architects means that the buildings in which many minority Americans live, work and play are often designed by people who may not be attuned to their cultural reference points, experts say. And the design of all spaces, regardless of who uses them, can suffer when decisions do not include a variety of perspectives.