Women in Zooarcheology

Most archeologists would probably agree that women are not so well-represented as are men in professional archeological positions in North America. However, women are commonly believed to have greater numerical strength in such laboratory-based specialties as zooarcheology and paleoethnobotany. Gero's (1985, 1991) surveys of gender ratios among specialists in these and other areas support the widespread notion that women are differentially better represented in such specializations than in archeology as whole. She attributes the greater proportions of women in lab specialties to a long-standing reluctance of male mentors in North American archeology to permit female graduate students to engage in field work, at home or overseas (for case study examples, see biographies in Williams 1981). As Gero (1991) notes, greater numerical representation in a field does not necessarily imply higher status or greater influence in setting the terms of archeological research. Nor, as this study suggests, does greater proportional representation necessarily translate into equity in rank and income levels. This article reports statistical evidence for differences in women's and men's achieved degree status, work placement, and topical focus within zooarcheology, using two databases. The first is my survey of the subscribership of the Zooarchaeology Research News (Gifford-Gonzalez 1993), a quarterly newsletter published by Pam Crabtree and Douglas Campana of New York University. The second is a survey of self-identified zooarcheologists in the 1991 Guide, encompassing people employed by mainstream academic institutions, museums, government agencies, and larger Cultural Resource Management (CRM) companies (the Guide's "Research Institutions").