Women in the Lab, Men in the Field? Correlations between Gender and Research Topics at Three Major Archaeology Conferences

ABSTRACT

Rising interest in gender equality in society has resulted in greater scrutiny of gender inequality in academic communities. Analysis of authorship of peer-reviewed publications shows that archaeology, like other academic fields, has long been dominated by men. We ask if gender disproportionality is evident in the topics presented by archaeologists 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 participants’ gender correlate with the topics of their presentations? We analyzed presenters’ names in published programs to infer gender. We used machine learning to identify topics from presentation titles. We found distinctive topics that are strongly associated with women, such as cultural heritage, GIS, and isotope analyses. 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.

KEYWORDS:

• gender
• sociopolitics of archaeology
• topic modeling
• conferences

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the organizers of the SAA, EAA, and CAA meetings for sharing their data in a format suitable for quantitative analysis. Earlier versions of this research were presented at the University of Washington Undergraduate Research Symposium in 2020 and the SAA meetings in 2021. We’re grateful for questions and feedback from those events that helped to improve this paper. Thanks to Catherine Jalbert and Laura Heath-Stout for their encouragement and detailed feedback that greatly improved earlier drafts of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yichun Chen

Yichun Chen is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington whose majors are economics (BA) & philosophy (Ethics) and minors are applied mathematics & anthropology.

Ben Marwick

Ben Marwick (Ph.D. 2008, Australian National University) is a professor of archaeology in the University of Washington Department of Anthropology. His research focuses on hominin dispersals into mainland Southeast Asia, forager technologies, and ecology in Australia, mainland Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. He analyzes how archaeology engages with local and online communities, with popular culture, and is interested in techniques and methods for reproducible research, open science, and investigating the sociopolitics of the discipline. ORCiD: 0000-0001-7879-4531.