Women are in the minority in most sciences, although they form a growing share of the total in social science. This project will analyze the job histories of about 11,000 persons listed in 27 consecutive years of the annual listing "Guide to Departments of Anthropology". The project will link individuals in successive years to study their professional careers within these academic departments (until recently the main source of professional employment for anthropologists). Hypotheses to be tested involve the tentative finding that male and female appointment and promotion rates converge over historical time, and that the differences between male and female promotion rates diminish as persons advance to higher ranks. This research has implications for the general job market and women's labor force participation. The narrowness of the investigation within one discipline will allow control over key variables such as prestige of degree-granting and hiring departments, the variation within subdisciplines, and labor flows within a single discipline. The data base will be the foundation for future studies which link other data (on productivity, salary) to these.
