I had no plans to write this post. That is because when I got the National Science Foundation data on archaeology grants it did not come with gender or sex of PIs. However, yesterday when I was looking at the top PIs, in terms of number of grants and amounts, for NSF grants to archaeology projects I noticed a significant disparity in the number of men and women receiving grants. Women barely appear in the top grant receivers.
So last night, I took a sample of years and looked at the number of male and female PIs receiving NSF grants for archaeology projects. I looked at the years 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2013. The results were:
| Count Men | Count Women | Men Total Amount | Women Total Amount | |
| 1985 | 24 | 4 | $6,197,712.73 | $1,178,342.40 |
| 1990 | 52 | 15 | $5,265,291.62 | $1,749,581.93 |
| 1995 | 76 | 23 | $6,954,844.11 | $5,121,814.92 |
| 2000 | 77 | 27 | $9,850,983.12 | $3,302,724.19 |
| 2005 | 80 | 44 | $16,338,412.36 | $4,303,664.08 |
| 2010 | 112 | 47 | $18,067,522.76 | $5,267,721.68 |
| 2013 | 80 | 45 | $10,862,518.00 | $5,643,121.00 |
The numbers are adjusted for inflation to 2013 dollars. The numbers are slightly misleading because PIs can also be the faculty advisers for PhD dissertation grants. These grants are put in by students and so it should be their genders/sexes we look at. Here are the number of those grants that are from students, again amount adjusted for inflation:
| Count Student Men | Count Student Women | Men Student Amount | Women Student Amount | |
| 1985 | 0 | 0 | $-00 | $-00 |
| 1990 | 7 | 7 | $99,173.38 | $137,517.71 |
| 1995 | 18 | 8 | $301,194.75 | $126,946.28 |
| 2000 | 17 | 15 | $263,474.10 | $232,652.61 |
| 2005 | 23 | 15 | $320,736.34 | $188,684.43 |
| 2010 | 16 | 25 | $300,966.18 | $416,816.50 |
| 2013 | 15 | 14 | $357,914.00 | $314,063.00 |
This brings the PI, non-dissertation grants to the following numbers:
| Count Men | Count Women | Men Amount | Women Amount | |
| 1985 | 24 | 4 | $6,197,712.73 | $1,178,342.40 |
| 1990 | 43 | 10 | $5,118,696.25 | $1,659,486.21 |
| 1995 | 51 | 22 | $6,539,454.57 | $5,109,063.43 |
| 2000 | 54 | 18 | $9,493,289.96 | $3,164,290.65 |
| 2005 | 57 | 29 | $16,020,449.31 | $4,112,206.35 |
| 2010 | 87 | 31 | $17,606,617.12 | $5,010,844.64 |
| 2013 | 63 | 33 | $10,457,200.00 | $5,376,462.00 |
Removing PhD students only slight changes the numbers. What the data shows is that there are significantly fewer women leading archaeology projects than there are men. This does not mean that the NSF is discriminating against women. In fact, women have roughly the same percentage of accepted grants as men. The problem is that fewer women apply for NSF grants. Here is the breakdown for all NSF grant applications for the last few years:
| 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
| Female Applications | 8,266 | 8,510 | 9,197 | 9,431 | 9,727 | 11,903 | 11,488 | 10,795 |
| Male Applications | 31,456 | 31,482 | 32,650 | 32,074 | 32,091 | 38,695 | 35,211 | 32,932 |
| Total | 39,722 | 39,992 | 41,847 | 41,505 | 41,818 | 50,598 | 46,699 | 43,727 |
| Female Applications | 21% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 23% | 24% | 25% | 25% |
| Male Applications | 79% | 79% | 78% | 77% | 77% | 76% | 75% | 75% |
75% of the applications put into the NSF are from men. The reason women are not getting as many NSF grants as men in archaeology is because fewer women are applying. Fewer women are applying because well there are fewer women in tenure track positions at universities, the main recipients of NSF grants. Until archaeology fixes its gender problems we are going to see this sort of distribution over and over again.
My slightly insensitive methods
Because the data I had did not come with the sex or gender information I had to base my assumptions on names. Of course I went beyond placing people by the name of John in the male category. I went and looked up their profiles online or their digital trails. I then used descriptions of them e.g. ‘he did this dig’, ‘she excavated this’, etc. To assign sex to the PIs. However, this is me assigning them sexes and genders and not them self identifying. This meant I have overlooked transgender and transsexual or any of the categorizes of third genders. So I humbly apologize if I have miss characterized anyone.
Surprisingly there was only one or two people I could not find an online profile for. So I am very confident that this data is accurate in terms of finding the right people and characterizing them into at least one of two categories.
There were 706 grants for the years in question
fringearch
March 11, 2014
Hey Doug, see if you can find this presentation paper:
Bardolph, Dana and Amber M. VanDerwarker.
Sociopolitics in Southeastern Archaeology: The Role
of Gender in Scholarly Authorship
It was presented last year at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Tampa. While not dealing with NSF grants, they do discuss very similar issue in the disparity of authorship between genders and if I am remembering correctly, discuss some potential social aspects.
Doug Rocks-Macqueen
March 12, 2014
Thanks for the reference. No luck finding it online but I will email the authors.
Cheers
Doug
sfbones
March 11, 2014
Reblogged this on Beauty in the Bones and commented:
An interesting read.
Morgan
March 29, 2014
Hi! I am currently writing a term paper on historical women archaeologists that is part history reclamation, part analysis of under-representation. I am also hoping to conduct a (limited) review of publication rates in some major archaeological journals much like what you’ve done here. Would it be all right if I referenced your data in my research?
Doug Rocks-Macqueen
March 29, 2014
Yes, please do. Would you be willing to send me the paper when it is done?
Morgan
March 30, 2014
Certainly- thanks!