Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Numerous recent studies have demonstrated that an increase in the number of women with PhDs in anthropological archaeology has not substantially altered the percentage of women submitting senior NSF grants, publishing their research in peer-reviewed journals, or engaging in other prestigious academic activities. This session has two primary goals. First, it aims to continue documenting gender inequalities in archaeological practice by exploring a wider range of scholarly activities than is traditionally considered and with an explicit focus on questions of labor and prestige. Is there relative gender parity in the authors included in syllabi for archaeological courses, and who is doing the work to achieve better representation? How do intersectional identities differentially affect women in the field of archaeology? Second, this session aims to move beyond documentation to help explain why gender inequalities persist and how they might be ameliorated. Should scholars, for instance, critically examine often taken for granted notions, such as fit and prestige, that may unintentionally perpetuate exclusion? Or, should researchers attempt to articulate the subtle yet active ways in which inequality is enacted, such as gender devaluation and performative informality? Participants are encouraged to adopt new and innovative perspectives on a stubborn and persistent problem.
Other Keywords
Gender and Childhood •
Gender •
Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology •
Power Relations and Inequality •
Survey •
Cultural Resource Management •
Ethics •
Representation •
Household Archaeology •
Sociopolitics
Geographic Keywords
Department of Martinique (Country) •
Republic of El Salvador (Country) •
Department of Guadeloupe (Country) •
Antigua and Barbuda (Country) •
Belize (Country) •
Anguilla (Country) •
Republic of Guatemala (Country) •
Republic of Honduras (Country) •
St. Lucia (Country) •
Montserrat (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)
- Documents (10)
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Archaeology Moms: Mobility, Parenting, and Privilege in Archaeology (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the great parts of being an archaeologist is that it is an excuse to travel: for jobs, research, and conferences. Yet some of us are more free to travel than others. In this paper, I will focus on the experiences of parents—mothers in particular—to explore how the expectations of mobility in...
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Authorship and Practice in Guatemalan Archaeology through an Intersectional Lens (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This intersectional study explores gender and nationality in the production and dissemination of knowledge in Guatemalan archaeology. We examine publication trends in the memoirs of Guatemala’s annual archaeology symposium between 1990 and 2019. As the country’s main venue of dissemination of archaeological...
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The Impact of Gendered Mentorship in the Leak between Dissertation Programs and Tenure-Track Jobs (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The leaky pipeline for women in archaeology has been documented in a number of contexts. This paper begins by measuring the size of the leak in the pipeline from PhD programs to tenure-track positions in US anthropology departments. As an attempt to move toward explaining why gender inequalities persist, we...
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Inequity Critiques: Fit, Prestige, and the Don Quixote Effect (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 35 years, scholars have produced an ever-increasing number of publications critiquing sexism and androcentrism in contemporary archaeological practice. Various studies have considered the relationship between intersectional gender identities and the completion of doctoral degrees, submission...
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Is a Woman’s Place in the Household? Gender, Prestige, and Feminized Archaeology (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists consider the household the smallest unit of economic and social production and acknowledge household activities have bottom-up effects on society. However, studies of households are not as headline-grabbing as “lost” cities and royal tombs and may be undervalued in terms of impact factor and...
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"A Masculine Occupation": Women in CRM (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many studies of women in the field of archaeology focus on academic institutions; however, more archaeologists are employed by the public and private sectors. In this paper, we examine the place of women holding positions in cultural resource management. By examining first-hand experiences of women in the...
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The Names We Know: Labor and Prestige in Archaeological Publishing (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1985, Joan Gero published an article in *American Antiquity* arguing that archaeologists conform in their professional roles to stereotypical American gender roles: publicly visible, dominant men collect and publish data and passive, publicly invisible women do the “archaeological housework.” This...
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“To Have Expertise Be Recognized”: Black Women Archaeologists, Obligation, and Archaeological Expertise (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, archaeological organizations and universities organized panels to address anti-Black racism in archaeology. These talks and panels relied on Black women’s sense of obligation to better not only the field of archaeology but the climate for Black people in the...
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Where Have All the Women in Archaeology Gone: Gender (In)Equity in Tenure-Track / Tenured Academic Jobs (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies have shown that the proportion of female faculty members in anthropological archaeology—while still below the proportion of women receiving doctoral degrees in the discipline—has increased over time. Nevertheless, there has been little consideration of the types of tenure-track / tenured...
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Who Makes the List: An Examination of Inclusion and Representation in the Society for American Archaeology’s Annual Meetings (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent paper by Mary Leighton problematizes the culture of archaeological practice and the emphasis on embodying aspects of “performative informality.” Social relationships among archaeologists are attributed to assessments of merit rather than the friendships they often represent, and these relationships...