Gender inequality carries high social costs, and understanding its causes and consequences remains a pressing concern. Numerous policymakers and academics have taken on this challenge, including anthropological archaeologists. Because archaeologists create narratives about the past that can justify or question current and future actions, contemporary archaeological practice impacts everyone. This themed issue builds on recent documentations of disparities and calls to address them. To do so, contributors use a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses, as well as novel theoretical perspectives, to understand why intersectional gender-based inequalities continue and to propose interventions to rectify them. We begin by considering the history of feminist equity critiques. We then argue that scholars should build on existing research by reconceptualizing not only difference but also exclusion. Policymakers, academics, and others must move beyond the problematic yet ubiquitous metaphor of a leaky pipeline and instead consider the active—though often unconscious and unintentional—ways individuals and institutions exclude, including through notions of fit, prestige, and the hysteresis of habitus, also known as the Don Quixote effect. The overarching goal of the themed issue, and this article, is to advocate for interventions in contemporary archaeological practice and beyond.

In STEM fields, women tend to leak out of the pipeline to the professoriate. In archaeology, however, robust databases and chronological control reveal that there is no leakage from earning a PhD to tenure-track positions. Nor is there a leak from assistant professor to associate professor. Nevertheless, men get hired as faculty in PhD programs more often than women. This is important because PhD programs are research-intensive and train future leaders. Furthermore, women PhD students have women as advisers more than often men and report advantages to this arrangement. Yet with fewer women faculty in PhD programs, women mentors are in short supply. Potential solutions to these problems target areas where bias can intervene. Specifically, job search committees should (1) wait until late in the process before consulting letters of recommendation, (2) standardize the valorization of coauthorship for both men and women, and (3) prioritize applicants who match the job description when creating long lists. Finally, implicit bias training is critically important, and mentoring should be continuous and enthusiastically positive.

Academic and professional conferences provide opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge, networking, and professional development. Those in more prestigious roles often gain greater visibility, and invited roles in particular make important statements about whose research the profession values most. Conference participation is therefore a source of economic, social, and cultural capital that translates into real opportunities and future career success. In this article, we examine gender representation in the field of archaeology through the lens of participation in the annual meetings of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). Using archived SAA annual meeting programs from 2002 to 2024, we analyze differences in gender representation across conference roles and participation formats. We find that although women and men are similarly likely to fill self-selected leadership roles, women are less frequently asked to fill invited roles by their peers, particularly when men serve as organizers. We thus argue that gender plays a strong role in determining who occupies positions of prestige and that decisions about who is “qualified” affect distributions of capital within the discipline. We conclude by recommending a series of interventions to session organizers, session participants, and the SAA to help redress gender-based differences in conference participation.

Studies on authorship in archaeology have revealed inequalities that influence interpretations of archaeological narratives. Like other countries with rich archaeological heritage, Guatemala has drawn a diverse pool of researchers for decades, owing to its renowned Maya heritage. This study examines how gender and nationality shape knowledge production in Guatemalan archaeology. We analyze publication trends in Guatemala’s most prominent publication venue, the memoirs of the annual archaeology symposium, and two international journals: Latin American Antiquity and Estudios de Cultura Maya. We also incorporate alumni data from Guatemalan universities and responses from an exploratory survey of 103 local archaeologists regarding occupations, identities, and perceptions of inequalities. Our study reveals that although Guatemalan archaeology has been characterized by relative gender parity, the dissemination of academic knowledge has been predominantly led by men, even during periods when there have been more female professional archaeologists. These disparities likely stem from several factors, including occupational variations, traditional gender-role expectations, and institutional barriers. While men have traditionally led the dissemination of academic knowledge, women have achieved leadership in other domains. This study highlights the current state of diversity in Guatemalan archaeology and serves as a first step toward building a more inclusive archaeological community.

Feminist and gender-focused archaeology have advanced our field, but this research is marginalized rather than integrated into broader analyses of societies. To address this situation, I analyzed publication content and related equity issues. I reviewed major archaeology journals to see how participation in and citation of household archaeology changed from 1990 to 2019. Since 2000, interest in gender has held steady, with about half of household archaeology articles mentioning gender, women, or children. Gender is most prevalent in historical archaeology. Meanwhile, feminism is rarely mentioned. When women publish on household archaeology, their work is as highly cited as men’s. In terms of citation counts, neither men nor women are punished for focusing on gender. I hope these data encourage archaeologists to submit articles addressing gender to high-impact journals. To more fully integrate gender into our field, US-based archaeologists could address underrepresentation of women authors in journals, reluctance to engage with politics and activism, privileging of quantitative data, academic hiring, and strategic uses of different kinds of journals.

Authorship metrics are a key component of academic advancement. Given recent increases in the publication of collaborative, multiauthored articles, we examine patterns in the perceived gender of authors of peer-reviewed journal articles with five or more coauthors in 11 academic archaeology journals. Our results suggest consistent patterns in lead and last authors and in coauthors. Men are more likely to serve as both lead and last authors and to include far more men than women as coauthors on their publications. We consider the ways gender homophily, friendship networks, and other forms of often unintentional exclusion may have a negative impact on the careers of women and members of other marginalized communities in archaeology and propose recommendations to address these issues within the field. In addition to greater individual reflexivity around coauthorship decisions, we encourage the development of clear guidelines on author ascription by archaeological organizations and publishing outlets and advocate that institutions adopt both total publication and fractional publication counts as measures of individual productivity.

This article examines field experiences across archaeological sectors and demographics through the results of a survey aimed at understanding how the culture of toughness is manifest in archaeological fieldwork through the prevalence of discrimination and pressure to accept inappropriate behaviors and to push oneself physically, mentally, and emotionally. We selected these particular behaviors as they demonstrate ways in which archaeologists perceive expectations and how individuals prove they can endure, that they are tough enough. Our survey data demonstrate that women, noncisgendered, and entry-level archaeologists are the most vulnerable to negative experiences, that the pressure to push beyond one’s limits is universal, and that discrimination and harassment are factors increasingly considered by women as they decide whether to continue in the profession. We argue that many of these rules and social conditions are created and maintained inconspicuously through performative informality which is linked to the discipline’s culture of toughness. Through analysis of our quantitative survey results, we discuss how archaeology’s work culture shapes experiences in the industry and examine avenues for reform to promote equity in archaeology.

Despite improvement over the past few decades, particularly for white, cisgender women, intersectional gender-based inequality remains prominent within anthropological archaeology and beyond. Building on critiques of the leaky pipeline metaphor laid out in the introduction to this themed issue, and drawing on Black, Indigenous, and Posthumanist Feminisms, we advocate for a metaphorical shift focused on care, inclusivity, and diversity—that of a garden. The garden metaphor provides a way to express and explore the complex and intertwined ways disciplinary norms, institutions, and individuals structure and shape experiences in archaeology. After reviewing the garden metaphor and summarizing previous suggestions for improving equity in archaeology, we present recommendations for actionable steps at disciplinary, institutional, supervisory, and individual levels. Drawing on insights from the articles in the issue, as well as existing literature within and beyond archaeology, we argue that a greater emphasis on care, and its integration into the value structure of archaeology, would create a more inclusive discipline.

This digital review examines how feminist data science can inform, challenge, and reshape archaeological knowledge production in an era of expanding digital data infrastructures. Beginning with a historical analysis of the term “feminist” in American Antiquity, I demonstrate that although feminist perspectives have appeared consistently over four decades, such engagement remains limited in scope. Drawing from this context, I argue that the proliferation of online, publicly accessible archaeological datasets requires renewed feminist and decolonial scrutiny. I situate these challenges within broader conversations around FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics) principles, Indigenous data sovereignty, and moderated openness, highlighting tensions between expanding digital access and resisting colonial datafication. Intersectional feminist data science, particularly the framework proposed by D’Ignazio and Klein (2020), offers actionable principles for confronting inequities embedded within archaeological data structures. I illustrate these principles through a multimodal collaborative project with the Pueblo of Zuni and the Hopi Tribe, which uses film-based storytelling to reframe relationships to ancestral collections and places. The article concludes with a reflection on citation inequities and disciplinary gatekeeping, underscoring how digital data practices can either reproduce or dismantle structural biases. I argue that transforming archaeological data science requires collective courage and sustained commitment to feminist, Indigenous, and community-engaged approaches that expand the inclusivity and ethical integrity of our field.