Correlations between Gender and Research Topics at Three Major Archaeology Conferences

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Documenting Demographics in Archaeological Publications and Grants" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Disproportionate representation of genders has long existed in many academic fields. Rising interest in gender equality in society generally has resulted in greater scrutiny on gender inequality in academic communities. Analysis of authorship of peer-reviewed publications shows that archaeology is similar to other academic fields in having long been dominated by men. We ask if gender disproportionality is evident in the choice of topics that archaeologists present on at major conferences, particularly the Society of American Archaeology (SAA), the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), and the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) meetings. Does the gender of the participants in these archaeological conferences correlate with the topics of their presentations? We analyzed presenters' names in the published programs of these three archaeology conferences to infer gender. We then used machine learning to identify topics from presentation titles. We found that there are some associations between gender and topics. An awareness of these correlations between research topics and gender is important to ensure equitable participation in archaeology, and unbiased access to training opportunities for students. We expect these findings to be useful for instructors who prioritize gender equality in student and early career research activities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Documenting Demographics in Archaeological Publications and Grants

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33156