Sociopolitics in Southeastern Archaeology: The Role of Gender in Scholarly Authorship

Abstract

We explore the relationship between gender, authorship, and editorship in conference presentations and publications as a lens to examine current disciplinary sociopolitics and the relative contributions of men and women to southeastern archaeological research. We also report on the results of a survey on publishing trends in southeastern archaeology that we circulated to the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) membership in March 2014. The evaluation of publishing trends serves as a means to investigate academic merit and visibility, along with the production and validation of knowledge in southeastern archaeology. We document a strong gender imbalance in publication rates across a range of publication venues, including regional journals, state archaeology journals, and edited volumes, despite growing numbers of women presenting research at SEAC meetings. We discuss possible reasons for these gender disparities based on survey response data from members of the SEAC community. Despite a current culture and context of women's advancement in southeastern archaeology, many challenges and obstacles remain.

Keywords:

• Gender equity
• Southeastern archaeology
• Publication
• Sociopolitics
• Women in science

Acknowledgments

This project could have not been completed without the help of many individuals, some of whom we are unable to thank here personally. We thank Meagan Dennison, Renee Walker, Sarah Baires, and Edward Henry for their invitation to participate in the SEAC symposia (2013 and 2014) where this research was initially presented. Ann Cordell, Kandace Hollenbach, Janet Levy, and Karen Smith graciously provided access to SEAC membership data, past and present. Glen Akridge, Jodi Barnes, Ashley Dumas, Ed Jackson, and Tom Pluckhahn provided us with tables of contents from journal issues that were in press at the time of the study. We acknowledge the 2014 SEAC board members, including former president T.R. Kidder, for their approval of the survey distribution to the membership, and members of the University of California-Santa Barbara Department of Anthropology for beta-testing the survey before it was released. Tom Emerson and Greg Wilson provided thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The text greatly benefited from the constructive comments of editor Betsy Reitz, T.R. Kidder, and two anonymous reviewers for Southeastern Archaeology. Finally, we give our sincere thanks to the SEAC members who took our survey and provided profound insight into the issues at hand.

Data Availability Statement

The underlying research materials for this article can be accessed at https://core.tdar.org/project/400917/gender-equity-in-archaeology-project, under the Gender Equity in Archaeology Project archived in the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR, ID 400917). Materials can also be accessed at http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/vanderwarkerlab/research/databases, under Archived Databases in the Research and Collections tab of the UC Santa Barbara Integrative Subsistence Laboratory (ISL) website.

Notes

1 This trend is not just restricted to academia; 2013 survey data from federal agencies such as the Census Bureau, the Department of Education, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that women working full time/year round in the United States typically were paid just 78 percent of what men were paid (AAUW 2015).

2 The 2006 SEAC meeting evinced an equal proportion of male and female discussants, but all other years between 2000 and 2013 were heavily skewed towards male discussants. At the 2003 SEAC meeting, 23 men served as invited symposia discussants, and no women served as discussants.

3 For feasibility purposes, we did not evaluate repeat publishers for venues other than Southeastern Archaeology.

4 We present a composite view of state journal data because not every journal published a volume each year between 2000 and 2013.

5 We ran this same test for Southeastern Archaeology, but the results were not significant; publishing trends in that journal do not appear be attributed to the gender of the editor.

6 The full survey and results database is available on the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), under the Gender Equity in Archaeology Project (tDAR ID 400917, https://core.tdar.org/project/400917/gender-equity-in-archaeology-project). The results are also available on the UC Santa Barbara Integrative Subsistence Laboratory (ISL) website under Archived Database in the Research and Collections tab (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/vanderwarkerlab/research/databases).

7 One survey respondent listed “other” as his/her gender; for the purposes of this study, we exclude that individual's responses.

8 Academics with a Ph.D. (both men and women) reported that they are more likely to revise and submit to the same venue if asked to rather than not; no respondents reported that they always resubmit to a different venue, although a few reported that they sometimes will.

9 “Other” responses included that people would engage in both strategies, or that they would defer publication but present results online or at conferences first to get feedback.

10 It bears mention that if women are publishing less, then they are less likely to be invited to review other's work, as the general criteria for reviewer invitations typically include that the reviewer has previously published on the topic/area/method discussed in the submitted manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dana N. Bardolph

Dana N. Bardolph is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She conducts archaeological research in the Southeastern United States and the Peruvian Andes. She uses multiple methods to examine prehistoric domestic foodways, to assess how cooking practices, agricultural production, and the spatial dimensions of foodways shape identity construction and social life. She also researches ethical issues in contemporary practice, including gender equity in academic representation and publication.

Amber M. Vanderwarker

Amber M. VanDerwarker (Ph.D. 2003, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has been involved in field and laboratory work in Mexico, eastern North America, and Peru. Her research encompasses a variety of methods, regions, and themes that revolve around the relationship between humans and food in the New World, especially in the periods bracketing the shift to agriculture.