The Status of Women in Archeology

Abstract

Earlier studies, such as those cited in Roger Sanjek's seminal Signs article, clearly show that women anthropologists traditionally tend to have lower status than men. Suspecting that this might be the case in archeology as well as in anthropology more generally, our objective was to identify areas in which differences between the sexes might be empirically expressed. Selected observations regarding archeology PhD recipients, patterns in funding or preand post-doctoral level archeologists and faculty composition in major departments suggest that in the US doctorates, research grants and prestigious academic appointments are differentially acquired by male and female archeologists. Using longitudinal data covering the period 1976-1986, we offer the following observations: 1. More men than women receive the PhD in anthropological archeology. Data reviewed below neither support nor refute the hypothesis that this difference exists regardless of size and sex composition of entering student cohorts. Establishing causal relationships between discrimination against students and students' sex would require detailed longitudinal quantitative as well as qualitative documentation from a number of departments, which we lack. We note, however, that data from the 1976-86 AAA Guide clearly demonstrate that throughout this decade women have constituted about half of all anthropology graduate students in the departments shown in Table 1.