Fieldwork is a rite of passage for anthropologists. It gives the initiate firsthand knowledge of a culture, along with a feeling of camaraderie with colleagues, often in remote and rugged locations. But for women there is also a dark side—a risk of sexual harassment and rape, according to a survey of fieldwork experiences released today. Anthropologist Kathryn Clancy, who authored the study, found a disturbingly high incidence of physical sexual harassment among respondents: More than 20% of female bioanthropologists who took part said that she had experienced "physical sexual harassment or unwanted sexual contact." Most of these victims are female, and most of the perpetrators were colleagues of superior professional status, sometimes the victim's own fieldwork mentor.
The idea for the survey took shape in 2011 when Clancy, a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was talking to a friend, a female bioanthropologist like herself. The friend was traumatized, Clancy says: She had been raped in the field by a colleague, and her mentor convinced her to keep quiet for the sake of her career.
"It was like a slap in the face to learn that this was happening to my friends," Clancy says. In contrast, she describes her own Ph.D. fieldwork as "paradise." It took place in Poland and, just by chance, all the anthropologists at the site were female.
