Concluding Comment on Responses to Under-Representation in Contemporary Archaeology

Contemporary Archaeology’ are robust and thought-provoking and I get a strong sense that the proverbial ‘can of worms’ has been opened. In fact the lids have sprung on several differently labelled cans. The issues raised by the responses are diverse and individually particular. Collectively they encompass concerns of access to archaeological employment (see Boles, Hardy & Johnson), and the vicissitudes of uneven support and progression for those who stay in the discipline (see Hassett). At the heart of these responses lies the role of archaeology as a university subject, the implications of sticking with it as a career, and more widely ‘who’ or ‘what’ is archaeology ‘for’? In an institutional context, it can be most productive to strategically choose the particular ‘battle to fight’ at any one time. For example, the IoA Women’s Forum has considered whether its focus should be extended from gender-related issues to the wider concerns of equality and diversity of access to the discipline. Until now the Forum has considered that isolating achievable departmental actions, some of which I have listed, is more likely to lead to constructive change, rather than the potential dilution of working on a wide-ranging front. Alongside strategic actions, mentoring is valuable in tackling person-specific aspects of under-representation. A mentor has a longer-term trajectory of working through such issues and experiences, some of which may take time to unfold. As Hassett outlines, the possibility of gender-related issues affecting her career progression was not at all apparent to her in the early stages. A mentor also becomes better informed on potential issues of underrepresentation through the act of mentoring, due to an accretion of perspectives and experiences gained from several mentees. Hassett rightly notes the importance of sharing and profiling ‘obstacles in career progression’ and the key role of ‘supportive networks’ of which the TrowelBlazer Project is an excellent example. Many professions are intensely competitive but the key stress points in a person’s career are not necessarily at the same times in every profession. Shelley Adamo (2013), for example, has compared the lesser attrition of females in medicine in contrast to that of the biological sciences. She highlights how females undertaking careers in medicine are the more overburdened in terms of workload stress and lack of flexible working hours, but for most women the stage of the most intense competition in medicine is prior to family formation. She suggests that the reason more females drop Forum