A report commissioned by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which runs the program, and produced by an outside firm, found that those who work in Antarctica generally do not trust their employers to take complaints of harassment seriously..

Overall, according to the 2021 survey cited in the report, 72% of women reported that sexual harassment is a problem.. The survey included people who worked in Antarctica in the previous 3 years, including scientists, as well as support staff such as cooks and janitors, and military personnel.

The report, based on interviews and focus groups, as well as anonymous survey responses, does not attempt to quantify the extent of sexual harassment in the program, but offers some candid reports.

“Every woman I knew there was assaulted or harassed,” said one interviewee..

The report cites McMurdo, a sprawling research station with over 1,000 people during its summer peak, as the epicenter, but notes that sexual harassment problems have been identified at all U.S. Antarctic stations, including Amundsen-Scott at the South Pole, research.

“We are still working on trying to understand how we got to this point and how we can move forward,” said Roberta Marinelli, head of NSF's Office of Polar Programs, in an interview with Science magazine..

“The report was more shocking than I expected,” says Helen Fricker, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of San Diego who studies the Antarctic ice sheet.. She traveled to the Continent herself early in her career and most recently sent students there.. She's heard some 'pretty horror stories' from colleagues in Antarctica..

The report shows that “it was definitely much, much more common than I thought,” Fricker says.. - Some of the things that these people have encountered are criminal. … I mean, literally, people were talking about being raped.”.

In 2013, the NSF enacted the Polar Code of Conduct, which explicitly prohibits “physical or verbal abuse of any person, including, but not limited to, harassment, stalking, bullying or hazing of any kind”. Violation consequences may include removal from Antarctic station.

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However, not all, let's say, the events that take place on sexual grounds in conditions of isolation from the mainland can be reduced to harassment..

At Antarctic stations in an extremely narrow micro-society, ordinary living people work for months, who, like everyone else, can fall in love and / or want sex. Perhaps (this is also worthy of study), attraction, love at the Antarctic station may be more aggravated than in the situation of a much greater choice of objects of attraction on the mainland..

In 2020 at the Ukrainian Antarctic station named after. academician. Vernadsky committed suicide 35-year-old cook station Vasily Omelyanovich, a native of the Zhytomyr region. This was his third expedition. The reason is an unrequited love for a biologist researcher who also worked at the station..

Apparently, the sexual behavior of individuals in closed groups of people in conditions of forced long-term isolation from the macrosociety is a topic for a broader and deeper study than sociological surveys.. And Antarctic expeditions are ready-made laboratories for this..