The Weaker Sex? An Archaeology For Gender Empowerment In 20th Century Portugal

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology, Activism, and Protest", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Gender equality is an objective that has yet to be achieved on a larger scale. Women have always been and are still part of the industrial workforce, nonetheless, they often keep being ignored and marginalized by archaeological research as part of a productive system that enhanced their social subalternization. In general, industrial archaeology continues to promote the idea that women are the “weaker sex”, and heteronormative myths related to their working situation keep “occupying” the minds of so many people. As a public science, archaeology must contribute to the activist debate on social inequality and contemporary political debates by providing data about social practices, both in the past and in the present. Based on the example of the Portuguese situation of women working in industrial spaces, and defending that archaeology should be public, political, and activist, this paper intends to deconstruct those narratives and give a voice to these women.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Archaeology, Activism, and Protest

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow