A Critical Evaluation of Recent Gendered Publishing Trends in American Archaeology

This paper explores the relationship between gender identity and patterns of authorship in peer-reviewed journals as a lens for examining gendered knowledge production and the current status and visibility of men and women in American archaeology. Drawing on feminist theory and the feminist critique of science, I examine how gender imbalance and a lack of diversity continue to affect the work that archaeologists produce. The evaluation of publishing trends serves as a means to investigate knowledge valuation/validation in archaeology and lends insight into the control over archaeological narratives. Analysis of publication rates from 1990–2013 in a number of prestigious archaeology research journals (including American
Antiquity) as well as smaller-scale regional journals reveals that strong gender differences persist in one of the major ways that data are disseminated to the American archaeological community. I suggest that these patterns are likely a result of authorial behavior, rather than editorial or reviewer bias, and conclude with a discussion of future directions for practitioners to pursue research on gender equity in the discipline.