@politicsaccordingtohistory replied to your post “would you say that archaeology is mostly a male dominated field?”
Well, how many women are out making the discoveries compared to men, while how many women are going to be researching recovered artifacts to learn more of them compared to men? The funny thing is, schools have a very high number of women running them. All over. From teachers to the lunch staff. Is that a bad thing?
- There is no lab/field gendered divide in professional archaeology. Women are involved in all aspects of archaeological work, from research to project planning to field work to artifact curation and analysis to report writing.
- The assumption that “discoveries” happen in the field more often than in the lab, where the collected data and materials are analyzed, is incorrect.
- Women holding a wide array of jobs in schools does not actually have any bearing on the subject. We are talking here about figures of authority and influence.
- Academia in general is still heavily male-dominated, by which I mean the majority of top-level positions are held by men. But don’t just take my word for it.
- Academic archaeology is still heavily male-dominated. Men occupy more professorships, and professors are more likely to have their ideas taken seriously, and their publications read and circulated, even outside academia, in the popular realm.
- Most of the “great” (i.e., well-known) archaeologists and anthropologists have historically been (white) men. Their ideas about archaeology and culture have been centered for centuries, with the entire discipline of archaeology built around them. It is only relatively recently that many of these ideas have been seriously called into question or begun being dismantled, as people other than white men have begun moving up in academia and being taken seriously.
There is still a great deal of work to be done before archaeology is not a male-dominated field.
Some sources for your consideration:
- On an archaeology field trip in New Mexico an undergraduate noticed something that struck her as an odd gender imbalance: The professor leading the dig was a man, while the graduate assistant and all but two of the 14 undergrads were women.
- A recent study into the archaeological profession in 21 European countries resulted in recognising gender equality as a major topic that needs attention. The overall trend is that women will form the future majority of workers in archaeology. However, the conditions under which women work differ by country, and in several countries, women are paid less and are not well represented in leadership positions. Gender equality needs to be put on the agenda and each country should take measurements to close the gap.
- RESULTS OF A SURVEY FOR FIELD ARCHAEOLOGISTS / CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGERS (see page 31 for breakdown by income and gender).
- Society for American Archaeology Task Force on Gender Disparities in Archaeological Grant
Submissions- Papers from the Institute of Archaeology: Under-Representation in Contemporary Archaeology
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