Women in current academic archaeology

 

 

An earlier chapter mentioned Dame Rosemary Cramp, I included Cramp as she was the first female Professor at Durham and wanted to see if the gender split had improved in the years since. Particularly as the presence of a female lecturer can be a positive indicator to female students that they can continue onto a career in their chosen field of study. As this paper is being written, the latest Profiling the Profession survey by Landward Research Ltd. has just concluded. Sadly, compilation of data takes time, and the full dataset is not yet available. However, some statistics have started to be released. According to the latest survey 7000 people currently work in archaeology in the UK, 850 of these are in the academic sector. (Landward Research, 2021)

I was therefore hoping to get the latest gender splits for academia in archaeology, but these are sadly not yet available, also it is to be noted that Landward have changed their methodology for this survey. Previously they have surveyed only archaeological employers. This year the survey has also been opened to individuals employed in archaeology, formerly employed in archaeology, and current students of archaeology. The information from the Higher Education Statistics Agency in 2020 states that overall male professors continue to outnumber females by three to one, or 15,700 to 5,700 in 2018-19. That the number of female professors has increased by 1,200 in the five years since 2014-15. (HESA, 2021)

In a recent keynote speech entitled “Women in the Present, Women in the Past”, at the conference “Modern women of the past, unearthing gender in antiquity” held in early 2021, DR Rachel Pope offered a brief rundown of the numbers of women in archaeological academia. At the start of pope’s first lectureship, eight years after Cramp retired her post at Durham, in 1998, there were two female archaeology professors in Britain.

In 2007 this increased to 13% of archaeology professors being women, and a later study in 2016 shows it has grown to 25 female professors. None of which are women of colour at this point. (Pope, keynote, 2021)

Professor Sue Hamilton’s 2014 report seems to corroborate these numbers, she reported that 60–70% of the UCL Institute of Archaeology's undergraduate and postgraduate students were women. Likewise, the postdoc researchers. While the percentage of female academic staff has peaked at 31%. Women also make up the minority in all ranks at the IoA: 38% of lecturers, 41% of senior lecturers, 17% of readers, and just 11% of professors. (Hamilton,2014)

The last Profiling the Profession in 2013 also supports these figures, (see table below) women seem to hold the majority in museum and public heritage institutions. The same study did also find that women tended to do more unpaid volunteer work which may suggest how they have built up the necessary experience to be employed in these areas, alongside the fact that museums, visitor centres, etc are more likely to adhere to family friendly hours. This may shed light on the 2016 figures quoted by Pope above, of 25 female professors in archaeology, only four of whom had children.

Figure 8:Table showing gender breakdown of archaeology roles in the UK 2013. Landward Research Ltd.

There appear to have been fluctuations in the number of women in academic archaeology over the past century. As discussed earlier, most of the public archaeology written in the 1920’s was done by female archaeologists. They were publishing articles in understandable terminology for the public in national magazines. They were however, excluded from many institutions and societies, therefore effectively barred from academic publication. This shifted considerably in the 1930s – 1940s, as more men were drafted in for the war effort, their wives took over the positions they left behind. This did not just apply to archaeology, but to all industries. Propaganda was designed to push women to take over their husbands’ positions as postmistresses, bus drivers, factory workers etc. While the 1941 National Service Act conscripted unmarried women between the ages of 20-30, and childless widows. It was later further extended, but the temporary knock-on effect in archaeology was that many women, some mentioned in an earlier chapter, who had been seen as part of a husband-and-wife duo, or often in their husband’s shadow were now taking up lectureships, particularly in the London institutions.

Post war Britain saw an attempt to revert to the status quo. The men returning from war had been promised their jobs were waiting for them and so women were encouraged to step aside. Propaganda campaigns were this time directed towards women’s duties being to the house and family, women who were married were the primary targets. Women's wages were not considered central to families’ income, instead it was thought that women's wages were for ‘extras’ such as holidays or new consumer durables, and therefore kept lower than men. Most of the state funded nurseries set up during the WWII were closed. The benefit rates for married women were set at a lower level than those for married men. After the war, women were encouraged to turn their attention to the domestic sphere. A Persil advert shows wives competing over the whiteness of their washing. (Striking Women 2021) Marriage bars continued until the 1970s in some companies and this has likely led to the slow pace of female progression in all UK industries.

It is only now that industries are staring to focus on reporting gender pay gaps, look at flexible working, and shared paternity leave that we may start to see employment rates between genders level up. The latest figures from the yet to be released Profiling the Profession does show that these are factors being investigated be archaeological employers, including academic, Gender Pay Gap reporting is now in place at 61% of the organisations in the UK (Landward Research, 2021).  The other failing is the lack of diversity in the field, there are distinctly less people of colour in archaeology, partly due to class divisions and poor remuneration, and our failure to decolonise our approach to archaeology. (Laura Hampden, 2019, pers.comms)