Many women who work at McMurdo Station, the main United States research base in Antarctica, say the isolated environment and macho culture have allowed sexual harassment and assault to flourish.
The National Science Foundation, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. Antarctic Program, published a report in 2022 in which 59% of women said they’d experienced harassment or assault while on the ice, and 72% of women said such behavior was a problem in Antarctica.
But the problem goes beyond the harassment, The Associated Press found. In reviewing court records and internal communications, and in interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, the AP uncovered a pattern of women who said their claims of harassment or assault were minimized by their employers, often leading to them or others being put in further danger.
Buckingham was hired by PAE. Amentum didn’t respond to questions from the AP. Leidos Senior Vice President Melissa Lee Dueñas said it conducts background checks on all its employees.
“Our stance on sexual harassment or assault couldn’t be more clear: we have zero tolerance for such behavior,” Dueñas said in an email. “Each case is thoroughly investigated.”
Translates to 1) We thoroughly investigate and hire sexual predators and 2) We say this b.s. to protect our jobs, actually we have zero tolerance for those who complain about sexual harassment.
The report made it clear that those in charge enable sexual predators.
Makes you wonder what challenges women will face in future space exploration missions. Long periods of isolation with groups of coworkers with very little personal space. Not like a belligerent party can be ejected out the airlock (It''ll probably happen who am I kidding)
TL;DR female astronauts have, according to the study:
a higher risk of cancer (a 45-year-old man has a 344-day limit in space versus a 187-day limit for a 45-year-old woman)
more orthostatic intolerance
more UTIs (which makes sense as women on earth are also more likely to have UTIs)
less vision impairment compared to male astronauts (no clinically significant cases of VIIP syndrome)
less hearing problems (men show a more rapid decline in the left ear and in general as well, but this is the case on Earth too)
Keep in mind that this data is not the best because only around 20% of people that had been on the ISS at the time of the study were women and because male astronauts are more likely to come from a military background.
I personally think this means we should send an equal amount of both sexes (maybe more women as it would help get more data on the differences). Sending all-men or all-women missions sadly won't fully solve the problem as sexual assault isn't always between men and women, that said, it is less common so it's not a bad idea.
Anyways, more investigation is required. If you find a newer/better study please tell me (or if something I wrote is inaccurate), I don't want to spread misinformation
Just FYI that username may get you some hostility. It's far too close to Ace of Bass which is a band from the 90s that were neo-nazis. The Base of Aces was a Nazi submarine base in WW2. I'm not assuming anything here, the lead singer and guitarist both confirmed separately that was what their band name was referring to, just before they lost all their fans.
Yeah, that's stretching it a little (probably based off the Cracked article from a while back).
Ace of Base was named after Ace of Spades (a song by Motorhead) as a reference/homage, anything beyond that is purely speculation as the band have categorically denied it.
And yes, Ulf was indeed in a band that wrote some pretty heinous stuff but he has both repeatedly apologised for that, made clear he no longer believes in any of this, and made explicitly clear that Ace of Base never shared these ideas.
I had a female friend/coworker that had previously served in the Navy, on a carrier as a communications specialist. She told stories of endless harassment. She said ultimately some of the women crafted partnerships with other female sailors and convinced everyone they were lesbians in order to just survive the job. It meant they had to spend lots of time together and play the part. She also said they had to work the jealousy angle because nobody wanted to be attacked by an angry lesbian girlfriend.
The male sailors assumed a lot of the women were lesbians because of the masculine nature of the work, or, as she put it, because they couldn't believe the women weren't attracted to them. It turned out if you gave them a plausible explanation you could fake your way through it. Without a plausible explanation, they could become resentful and dangerous. I asked if claiming to be married and/or have kids would work, she said it wasn't as effective and you ultimately needed female allies anyway. She also said that actual lesbians would pretend to "date" hetero women in order to protect them. She kind of described it as leveraging the power of rumors.
I told her it sounded a lot like what happens in prison. She said in some ways, it was a prison.
Being alone in the middle of a literal ice desert with a lot of male nerds so socially awkward that they rather be in the middle of an ice desert sounds like an absolute disaster.