On Being a Woman in Academia

Like most scientists who also happen to be women, my career path has included a couple of rough patches attributable, I think, to my plumbing more than any other factor. Understand: the vast majority of archaeologists and scholars I’ve learned from and worked alongside over the years—including my mentors at the University of Arizona and my brilliant colleagues at Utah State University—have been wonderful human beings who’ve never for a moment engaged in discriminatory behavior toward me or anyone else.

But I do harbor memories of one truly bleak period in my life when I encountered all that remains and is truly ugly about gender bias in our society. That period was from 1999 to 2002, and it involved in particular two members of the faculty/staff of the institution that then employed me: Western State College, in little Gunnison, Colorado, on the state’s western slope. The two “black hats,” as I call them when I speak to women’s advocacy groups, are an anthropology professor named Mark Stiger and the man who is now the president of the college: former basketball coach Jay Helman.

If you click here, you will link to an open letter I address to members of the current (2004-05) Western State College faculty and student body. The letter overviews my experiences and what I decided to do about them, and it invites the many good people at Western State College today to use my story as the basis for a dialogue to improve their campus climate. The letter also provides links to supporting documents that some may find interesting and informative: on-the-record deposition transcripts, for example, given by the “black hats,” and links to articles published by the American Association of University Women who helped me fight a lawsuit against the college and reach a financial settlement.

As for the “black hats,” they are still working for Western State College and still therefore influencing the futures of women faculty, staff and students. Whether or not they should be, I leave for you to judge.