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.

  • @uis
    1•1 year ago

    are targeted by the same types to uphold their status.

    Or sometimes targeted by their mothers. At least this happened to me. I had one long fingernail(on middle finger, you guessed why) and my mother complauned about it almost every day to the point where she came to dad and complained to him. He said “why do you even care?”, but she continued anyway saying “this is not how men do”.

    This happened in post-Soviet society where average family with children is mother+grandmother, so it has nothing to do with “patriarchality” of society. I think it is just manifestation of much broader problems: virtual majority and I can’t translate it, but basicaly “you should do it this way because I said so”.