Gender bias, whether purposeful or inadvertent violates basic American principles and the goal of this project is to determine whether in one aspect of archaeology such bias exists and if so how it may be remedied. In Spring 2013, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) created the Task Force on Gender and Rates of Research Grant Submissions because of an apparent disparity in the rates of senior (post-Ph.D.) proposal submissions by males and females to archaeology programs at both NSF and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Although success rates of men and women to NSF over the past few years (2009-2011) were roughly equal (35% of applications submitted by women were successful, compared to 33% from men), the number of submissions from women were half that of men (270 women submitted applications over this three-year period compared to 542 men). Given the documented increase in the proportion of women in academic archaeology among early and mid-career academics, this 33% representation of women in the applicant pool seems low. Moreover, submissions for doctoral dissertation improvement grants at NSF are evenly divided between men and women. Statistics for Wenner-Gren funding note the same disparity in their post-Ph.D. funding in archaeology, though not in other anthropology sub-disciplines. Statistics for NSF funding in biological anthropology and cultural anthropology similarly show no difference in submission rates by men and women. This project will examine and integrate a variety of data sources to determine: 1) whether or not there is a real problem in research grant submissions, and 2) if it is a problem, whether there are recommendations that will address the problem(s).
This project uses multiple sources of information, including demographic data from the American Anthropological Association and member surveys conducted by SAA; detailed data from publicly available records of funded proposals from NSF and NEH; data on funded and unfunded proposals collected by Wenner-Gren and National Geographic Society, as well as a sample of submission data from NSF; and interviews with post-PhD women in academic archaeology to determine their strategies for funding archaeological research, as well as the kinds of research they undertake. Intellectually, the project will contribute to research on women in archaeology, and more broadly, to research on women in science. Although this project focuses on a trend that initially appears unique to archaeology, the trend may in fact reflect wider research concerns on gender disparities in science. Based on the project results, broader impacts include potential policy change recommendations to professional organizations and research funders. Women who may not have applied or have not reapplied for grant funding may feel more confident in applying/reapplying for grants, therefore expanding the pool of proposals considered for funding. The planned project website will allow wider dissemination of the research results in a user-friendly format. Finally, a series of reports and publications will be prepared to share the project findings in detail.
