Women in Archaeology

Dear colleagues,

In the discipline of archaeology, women now make up a greater percentage than men (Lazar et al 2014; Peliska 2014). However, an ongoing trend is that a greater proportion of well-paid positions are held by men (Peliska 2014). Over the past five decades, studies aimed at understanding gender disparities in archaeology have highlighted discrepancies in hiring practices (Zeder 1997:2), publication rates (Gero 1985; Heath-Stout 2020), and grant success (Goldstein et al. 2018; Yellen 1991). Yet, the MeToo movement and its fallout at the 2019 Society for American Archaeology meetings demonstrates that the field still has much work to do to create equal, inclusive, and safe conditions for women in our field.

The global crisis sparked by the coronavirus pandemic has put a spotlight on the persistence of gender disparities across disciplines. On-going studies suggest that women are publishing less since the pandemic began, disproportionately impacting younger researchers (Viglione 2020) and women with young children (Myers et al. 2020). This crisis not only highlights gender disparities, but also major efforts towards building diversity in science. In this moment it is hard to gauge the specific effects of the pandemic on women and minority groups in archaeology.

The aim of this Special Issue is to offer a real-time perspective on the status of women in archaeology. We aim to explore the long-term issues that women in archaeology have faced across their careers while also highlighting recent impacts, such as the coronavirus pandemic. While submissions can explore a variety of experiences from women working in academia, CRM, museum studies, and other archaeology-related careers, papers should be grounded by the literature on the history of women in archaeology/anthropology (or related fields) and/or gender archaeology, and if appropriate include data that demonstrate large-scale trends (e.g., Heath-Stout 2020).

Submissions of papers from women in under-represented communities are especially welcomed. We anticipate that it might be difficult for women with increased childcare responsibilities to participate in this issue. In effort to include a diversity of perspectives, we are willing to pair up authors who have similar interests, backgrounds, or experiences, to spread out the workload across multiple individuals working on similar topics. If you are interested in participating in this issue, but are currently unable to do so due to childcare or other responsibilities, please consider signing up to collaborate with other women on a paper by contacting the guest editors. Contributors who are willing to allow women with similar interests to join their papers should also contact the editors as soon in the process as possible. Papers that are currently in preparation (and open to additional collaborators) are focused on:

1. The impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on women in archaeology in academia, CRM, and museums.
2. Opportunities for young women in archaeology.

The list of available topics will be updated as additional papers are proposed.

References:
Gero, J. M. (1985). Socio-politics and the woman-at-home ideology. American Antiquity 50(2):342-350.

Goldstein, L., Mills, B. J., Herr, S., Burkholder, J. E., Aiello, L., & Thornton, C. (2018). Why Do Fewer Women than Men Apply for Grants after Their PhDs?. American Antiquity, 83(3):367-386.

Heath-Stout, L. E. (2020). Gender, Equity, and the Peer Review Process at the Journal of Field Archaeology.  Journal of Field Archaeology 45:135-139.

Lazar, I., Kompare, T., van Londen, H., & Schenk, T. (2014). The Archaeologist of the Future is Likely to be a Woman: Age and Gender Patterns in European Archaeology. Archaeologies 10(3):257-280.

Myers, K. R., Tham, W. Y., Yin, Y., Cohodes, N., Thursby, J. G., Thursby, M. C., Schiffer, P., Walsh, J.T., Lakhani, K.R., and  Wang, D. (2020). Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists. Nature Human Behaviour 1-4.  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0921-y

Peliska, Charles J. (2014)  Survey for Field Archaeologists / Cultural Resource Managers. https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/iia/6 Accessed 09/02/2020.

VIglione, G. (2020) Are women publishing less during the pandemic? Here is what the data say. Nature 581:365-366.

Yellen, John (1991) Women, Archaeology, and NSF: An Analysis of Fiscal Year 1989 Data. In The Archaeology of Gender, edited by Wade, Dale and Willows, Noreen, pp. 201–210. University of Calgary Archaeological Association, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Zeder, M. A. (1997) The American archaeologist: a profile. Rowman Altamira. Walnut Creek, California.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Julie Hoggarth
Asst. Prof. Dr. Alicia Ventresca Miller
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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