Women in current commercial archaeology

 

 

The conclusion of Everill’s study in 2012 shed some light upon the gender makeup of commercial archaeology and highlighted how the male gender remains promoted to the public as the image of an archaeologist. “The average British commercial archaeologist in 2012 is a white male. He is 38.38 years old – interestingly six years older than the result of the 2005 survey, further supporting the view of an ageing profession, with little intake of recent graduates. He has a degree, 10.74 years of field experience, and earns £20,000.” (Everill, 2012) Everill’s survey was completed by those working in or having recently worked in developer-led archaeology. While this has led to some more candid responses than those formally provided by organisations, as the Profiling the Profession surveys traditionally were, it does also result in a far smaller data set. But the trends seem similar. Both of which show there is a far closer balance between the genders than previously over the past few decades. By 2008 the UK figures had become 59% male, 41% female (Aitchison and Edwards 2008: 12).

By 2012, this gap has closed slightly further,

Figure 9: Table showing gender gaps in UK archaeology in 2012. (Everill, 2012)

Both American and UK stats follow a similar trend. Profiling the Profession showed in 2003 show staff in UK commercial organisations were 64.29% male and 35.37% female. Zeder’s 1997 figures for US professional archaeologists were almost an exact match at 64% male and 36% female. (Everill, 2012).

Where the gender gap widens substantially is in career progression and development. Everill’s last survey highlighted the drop off point where women leave the profession, most notably during child -bearing years, and return in larger numbers at a later age. In essence female staff decreases at a steady rate from the ages of late 20s to early 40s. We then see a small gain on numbers of female staff in the 46–50 age group before it continues to fall off. See table below. The latest survey has not yet been written up, but discussions with the author state that these trends are continuing, with the overall ages increasing slightly, in line with the overall age of the workforce increasing. (Everill, 2021, pers comms.)

 

Figure 10: 2012 gender and ages of UK archaeological workforce. Everill,2012

 

The then IfA’s ‘Equal Opportunities in Archaeology Working Party’ survey, compiled by Morris in 1992, also stated that women accounted for only 35% of archaeological staff in Britain at that time. Her supposition was that this difference is due to explicit and implicit sexism in the archaeological workplace, therefore few women achieve promotion to management positions. She goes on to postulate that this may be due to the perception that men are physically and mentally better equipped for excavation, whilst women are more comfortable in finds work. (Morris, 2008) This was echoed by Rachel Pope in her aforementioned keynote speech as being amongst some of the comments that she and Anne Tether received during surveying they undertook for their group “British Women Archaeologists (BWA). I personally would, while not denying the above, based upon plenty of anecdotal evidence I have heard, suggest that this is not purely a commercial archaeology scenario, but one that many industries suffer from. That this is also wider society’s perception of gender appropriate jobs, and likewise career development opportunities, care giving responsibilities, that a predominantly male management fail to recognise chiefly because it is not within the sphere of their personal lived experience and fail to implement changes because this is how it ever was.

 Morris suggests that in addition to this implicit and explicit sexism, there exists a widespread feeling that promotion to management should be achieved through extensive field experience, which leads to senior posts being male dominated. One way of changing this would be in looking at our concept of a working week. In theory, job sharing, flexible working, and shared parental leave should all be achievable in the logistics of developer led archaeology.