Thanks for the UK report — don’t have time to read it really right now but I was very very interested in Management and Business being — as in the US — the largest academic field in the UK (p47). Anthropology in the UK, on the other hand, appears to be one of the smallest of all social sciences… somehow this disparity doesn’t surprise me.

Your last question about France is really good and I don’t really know the answers yet, though I’m keeping my eyes open. I’ve read that the human sciences are generally majority women, at least at the level of the student body, though philosophy is more masculine. There definitely seem to be socially determined affinities between certain kinds of academic projects and certain genders — I met a small marxist group, for instance, that was almost entirely male — and apparently even research topics in philosophy are gendered (according to Charles Soulié’s 1995 study, aesthetics is apparently more feminine than canonical history of philosophy, for example). But can I get back to you about this in six months?

would love to hear what you think about quantification in anthropology. In spite of my post, I am still not too sure what to think myself!

Particularly interested in the gender distribution between UG, PG and PHD in US universities, particularly your diagnosis of the apparent ‘weeding out’ of women between enrolllment and submission in the phd process. It would be very interesting to know what some of the factors are, altho partners (and their jobs) and families can’t be far from the equation. But as Viola suggests, I think it is almost more important to consider the gap between phd and tenure. Anecdotal evidence around me makes me wonder about the relationship between hiring and gender, combined with the fact that finishing phds often coincides with a shortening window to start a family, and that the phd-ing partner in a relationship may be both more able to stay the course over lengthy periods of tenure-hunting, if their partner has a well paying job -but equally, less able to move to follow job openings for the same reason.

Writing from the UK, you might be interested by a recent report by the ESRC (SSRC equivalent), done by anthropologists, looking at the destination of recent UK social science phds. While the destination of different disciplines was interesting, so was some of the more anecdotal evidence about staying in academia, and leaving it. The impact of concentrations of captial – in London (where the cost of housing vs academic salary is thought to be having an effect), and with respect to the USA (brain drain?) is interesting too. See: http://bit.ly/skFeW They only offer pre-crunched data sadly (I’d like to have seen more attention to gender again).

Seeing the topic of your research; how does all of this compare to France? When I worked in the Netherlands briefly i was struck by a graph someone had photocopied and fly-posted on a notice board which suggested that the gender disparity across faculties (by university) was stark. …That of course would also be (albeit likely controversial) a very interesting piece of number crunching to do.

I look forward to reading more!

thanks for stopping by! eli

hi Viola,
Yeah, I agree it would be good to look at faculty demographics too. I have to say that, although I acknowledge that I’m not a woman and that certainly affects my view of gender dynamics, I don’t think gender dynamics in anthropology are overall quite as bad as you make it seem in this comment. Although the pressure you mention for women to become honorary men undoubtedly has existed, I think it was probably far more intense a few decades ago, when (at Chicago at least) there were hardly any women faculty and gender dynamics were probably more outrageous… and though I do love your metaphor of symbolic surgery, I don’t think women anthropologists are objectified and reduced to their looks always and everywhere, today. And I kind of felt confused by your last “question to women in anthropology” — aren’t you against this kind of sexist focus on hair and skincare? Towards the end of your fictitious question for women, it sounds a bit like you’re asking women faculty just this kind of intellectually irrelevant questions yourself. Can you clarify a little?

Being away from anthro, I am beginning to see the joys of doing womanly things and not constantly thinking to myself…”Oooo, this is such a gendered thing to do, so don’t do it ‘cuz you’re being disenfranchised by men and ugh! you’re even being complicit in the whole deal!”

I suppose my question to women in anthropology would be, “Now that you have a PhD and are a professor, tell me, just how much authority do you have? How many men truly listen to you? And what did you have to give up to get here, to this place from which you probably feel you can speak? And when you speak, what kind of squeak or squeal do you make, after you cough and cough and clear your voice and drink some bottled water? And by the way, I know you’re the Department Chair n’ all (kudos!) but you must know that everyone in the room was more interested in the way you wore your hair today and not in anything you had to say. And mmm, i just wanted to add, you’re aging gracefully. What’s your secret? Is it olive oil? Coconut oil? Papaya seeds? Something you discovered in the tropics? I wonder what you’re kitchen looks like. I wish I could really talk to you. Maybe learn a thing or two.”

🙂