The group was founded in 1981 in Germany, initially as a protest action in response to the under-representation of women in Berlin's Internationale Bauaustellung (International Building Exhibition or IBA, 1979-1987).
[1] After initially "hijacking" official IBA meetings, the group formally established itself a short time later in Berlin, and later expanded to other German cities, developing a strong and influential voice for gender equality, in particular throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
An 11-point charter, titled "Principles for a new spatial order" (Grundlagen für eine neue räumliche Ordnung) and advocating an aspirational planning and development approach based on equal civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights for men and women, was produced as a result of the 1991 European Women Planners Conference in Berlin.
Between 1983 and 2004, FOPA published the magazine FREI.RÄUME (free spaces) on the subject of feminist theory and practice in the planning, design, architecture and building.
As a result, three female architects, Zaha M. Hadid, Christine Jachmann und Myra Warhaftig, were commissioned to design three of six social housing complexes.