Digging Deep: Issues of Women in Archaeological Practice

     Early on in this term, there was a speaker who came into my classroom to campaign for a position within the student body promising to do remarkable things. He, within earshot, asked the professor what class we were in and whether it was common for the subject matter to have so many girls in comparison to boys taking it. I looked around and noticed that there were only two males surrounded by 21 females. This was a bioarchaeology class. This was also the earth-shattering realisation that materialized into the topic of this paper which will unpack the participation (or lack thereof) of women in the practice of archaeology.  

     It seems I have always been made aware of the issue of a lack of women pursuing careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields and educators trying to figure out why that is in order to combat the posited reasons such as males being wired to perform well in these subjects. It also feels like there have been a myriad of news stories that predict the fast approaching end of this gender disparity because things are different now. Inclusivity is well, in.

     I should note at this point that I do think archaeology is a science for the most part, for a variety of reasons (my defense on this debate shall be deferred to another paper assignment). Archaeology has a contentious history in that, despite some notable exceptions, Canadian archaeology before 1960 was perceived as almost exclusively male (Latta et al. 1998).

     So, it seems that there are a lot of women who are interested enough in archaeology to take a level four course in it, presumably to prepare for graduation with or with something related to archaeology. And it seems there is a growing inclination of women to pursue STEM careers. Thus, archaeology is probably one of those progressive fields that has been dealing with an influx of female practitioners over the last couple of decades and will continue to do so. Whether or not this is true is what I want to figure out.  

     For this paper, the practice of archaeology will refer to primarily to fieldwork even though archaeology is much more than just digging because at least until the mid-twentieth century, excavation was essentially the most important aspect of archaeology. This was because access to fieldwork was a key step in training for, and developing a career in the discipline (Hamilton 2007). It remains central to the discipline’s culture as the romanticism of fieldwork and excavation by archaeologists (i.e. possibility of discovery) and the general public (i.e. via pop culture portrayals) is still strong and shapes the discipline’s identity (Moser 2007).

     During the developmental years of archaeology, there was often firm opposition to women’s participation in excavations especially during the times there were no formal degrees available for them (Diaz-Andreu and Sorensen 1998). This was probably one of the biggest deterrents to women’s drive to stay in this field of study. The reasons for the opposition tended to center around a woman’s ability to do the actual work (Diaz-Andreu and Sorensen 1998). For example, statements were found in the field notes or program recommendations of men alluding to the need for physical strength and stamina needed for fieldwork which they suggested women did not possess (Diaz-Andreu and Sorensen 1998). Another example is the frustration felt by not being able to honestly say what one thought during the stressful times during a dig (i.e. swear) because there was a need to be polite and proper around women thus perpetuating the fragile woman stereotype (Diaz-Andreu and Sorensen 1998). But, did female participants actually take a nosedive as a result? Perhaps not. There are various blogs, such as trowelblazers.com, and twitter handles that highlight the accomplishments of pioneering women in the field. Among these honourable mentions lays the grim reminder that countless early contributions by women are lost due to a lack of acknowledgement in published work for reasons such as: being published under their husband’s name, having no official titles, and their work being seen as ‘secondary’ or ‘less essential’ than that of the field director who was usually male (Latta et al. 1998). The masking of female contributions to the field is a prime creator of the male-dominated perception of it in history. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the stereotypical gender roles, whereby men were understood to be the fearless explorers and women were seen as being secluded in the laboratory or museum classifying or sorting artefacts, were starting to be questioned (Moser 2007).

     I couldn’t find any reports (related to Canadian archaeology) that covers the recent plight of women in archaeology. As such, I have conducted a few mini-studies of my own to get a sense of how things are. Admittedly, these are all imperfect but will hopefully lead to the ‘aha’ moment for upcoming research on the gender inequality question. Seeking both causes and solutions to inequity (both real and perceived) in the field, a collection of papers by Nelson et al. collectively made the suggestion that women, more than men, emphasize family responsibilities, drop out of graduate school more frequently, downscale their career expectations, publish less frequently, and in general, proceed with less confidence (Martelle-Hayter 1996). My mini-studies attempt to assess each of those aforementioned reasons to see whether they still apply today compared to twenty years ago. If they do, then perhaps there is still the phenomena of women not staying in the field despite seemingly high enrollment by women in archaeology programs and it actually being a male-dominated discipline.

     This leads me to my first attempt at finding modern issues women are facing with regards to archaeology in practice. I gathered actual perspectives of women who are currently—or had been recently—working as an archaeologist through perusal of their blog posts and resultant comments within them.  There were two blogs that I looked at, namely trowelblazers.com and Feminine Voices in Archaeology. I read through approximately three years’ worth of blog posts in order to find common themes within them so as to provide commentary on current issues regarding women in archaeology that needs further dialogue. The themes are as follows:

1. Work-Life Balance

       a. Immense anxiety about having and high workload, deadlines and things like extended away trips.

       b. Being denied field opportunities for starting a family.

       c. Deciding whether or not to disclose a pregnancy at the start of a dig even though ethically it should be done (to avoid danger).

2. Gender Bias

       a. Fear of potential biases when applying for promotions or making career decisions which are often perceived than real.  

       b. Have to prove abilities as archaeologist. For example, being seen doing lab work or public engagement work garners queries about             why not on the field and why it did not work out. On the field, have to prove they can handle it all without complaint.

       c. Hash out how there are certain expectations for how women are to behave in the field.

3. Mentoring and Acknowledge Successes

       a. Used as a way to mentor and prepare women for careers in archaeology by offering connections and exposure to a variety of                     jobs/perspectives.  

       b. Support system for when fellow comrade has an issue.

       c. Inspire new generations by showing that things are not all bad for women. In fact, things are very good as seen by all the success                 stories shared of past and present women.

     These themes show that while there are issues that potentially change some women’s paths in archaeology, overall the positivity from the communal environment overshadows the negative and actually pushes more women to stay and continue to fight in the field. While there is still emphasis on work-life balance, it is often turned into a non-issue in the comments where encouragement and anecdotes are given to tell women to do whatever they want because determination can achieve anything.

     One study dug through more than 4500 peer-reviewed papers in 11 archaeology journals, covering a 23-year period. It found that female authors accounted for slightly less than 29 percent of articles published (VanDerkwarker 2014). Further, it was found that men submit papers far more often than women do with roughly the same rejection rate, which is probably a result of confidence issues, as rejections are not being revised and resubmitted as often as men (VanDerkwarker 2014). However, confidence in publishing and going for jobs is heightened through those online networks which help combat statistics such as the above. The inspiration of being reminded of all the successes of women cause a lessened downgrading of career aspirations.

     Next, I wanted to see how women are faring in a traditionally “manly” and “womanly” part of archaeology—fieldwork and museology respectively. This was done to see whether early gender stereotypes persist today.  Here, I limited my parameters to Ontario archaeology.

For fieldwork, I used a list of archaeologists who are licensed in Ontario and did a simple count based on their names. If the names were ambiguous after a google search, then I excluded them from the count. For the rest of the names, I assigned male or female based on common usage which may have given me some skewed results. This list was found on the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport (OMTCS) website (2016) that was last updated on March 31st. All archaeologists who carry out fieldwork in Ontario are required by law to hold a ministry-issued archaeological license (OMTCS 2016). Of course being a holder of a licence (it’s free!) does not mean they are conducting fieldwork, but it means they have some interest in it. There are three licensing types, all with varying levels of benefits and requirements. In the interest of being succinct, I will only share the professional license holder data which means they can conduct all aspects of archaeological fieldwork and require a master’s degree completion in an area of archaeology (OMTCS 2016). There were 139 professional licenses for males and 83 for females out of 222 viable names. This may show a lower level of master’s degree attainment by females or a lower level of interest by females to head and engage in fieldwork projects, or both. More information can be gleaned from carrying out this test for the other licensing to see patterns of women’s participation.

     To see the patterning of sex ratios for museology as a career, I looked at just one museum for the sake of space. Using the Royal Ontario Museum’s (ROM) staff list, I once again used common usage of names to sort through all the roles in the museum discarding names that were ambiguous and those who were retired (2016). There were 56 females and 50 males which is not a significant difference considering 14 names were omitted. However, out of the 47 curator roles, 20 senior curators were male while five were female. These numbers are excluding assistant or junior, retired and ambiguous curators. This demonstrates that there is still the possibility of some hesitance to apply for higher roles or there is some gender bias in place systematically that results in a lack of female promotion in place. More can be gleaned by looking at more museum data (i.e. comparison of large and small museums) and patterning different job positions.

     Ultimately, my research was inconclusive because there wasn’t much information I could find about levels of archaeological education attained among the sexes and then what career choices were made after to make a statement about where women choose to go in the field or whether women leave the field entirely. I could not speak to the possible disconnect between women graduates and the choice to become practitioners. There was also not much about the Canadian archaeological climate such as statistics of grants or awards given. As a rough estimate, we found that a significantly less number of women pursue managerial or complete fieldwork than males and that take on senior curation posts. So there seem to be some issues. But, ultimately there is a strong sense of positivity about women’s role within archaeology that is different from the field’s early years and does combat a lot of the hindrances faced today. Thus, the future looks bright for equality in archaeology. Future research should focus on other women’s issues in archaeology as opposed to just versus males. For example, perspectives and issues from women of colour, Native American women, or disabled women should be discussed (Martelle-Hayter 1996).