The UCSB Gender Equity Project: Taking Stock of Mentorship, Equity, and Harassment in California Archaeology Through Qualitative Survey Data

Abstract The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Gender Equity Project aims to assess the state of mentorship, equity, and sexual harassment within the California archaeological community. Using the Society for California Archaeology (SCA) as our target population, we administered two surveys in 2016 designed to address those themes. We frame the project in terms of research related to equity issues, outline our primary research questions, and present the demographic patterns from the surveys. Results include gender-based pay discrepancies, preference by women for cultural resource management (CRM) over academic jobs, history of inadequate mentorship for women and underrepresented minorities, and slightly higher rates of sexual harassment reported by women in CRM than in academia. We discuss how the impacts of these issues extend beyond the lives of individuals to affect the nature of the overall discipline.