Down at the White Continent, it’s every woman for herself.
McMurdo Station is a United States Antarctic research station on the south tip of Ross Island, on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica.
‘Mac-Town’, as the station people call it, is a cluster of buildings hugging the frozen shore, is operated by the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), a branch of the National Science Foundation.
It’s the largest community in Antarctica, with up to 1,200 residents, a hub for American activities on the ‘snow desert’, a place tasked with doing science that can’t be done anywhere else on earth.
Keith Collier, first season machinist, told the NYT: “McMurdo is like a mining town crossed with a very small college campus, crossed with military barracks – and with it being so isolated, anything that goes wrong there we pretty much have to take care of ourselves, to keep the base and the science going.”
Now, the cold hard truth about the life on the station is coming to light, as the National Science Foundation published a report in which 59% of women said they’d experienced harassment or assault while on the station.
Worse – an Associated Press investigation found that, quite often, claims of harassment or assault are minimized by employers.
AP News reported:
“Mechanic Liz Monahon told the AP a man at the base threatened her in 2021, but her employers did little to protect her. So she grabbed a hammer and kept it on her at all times.
‘If he came anywhere near me, I was going to start swinging at him’, Monahon said. ‘I decided that I was going to survive’.”
The man, who had a criminal record in New Zealand, was eventually sent off Antarctica – but the problem persists., as problems with the base’s drinking culture had been going on for years.
Many other women suffered similar situations. One was sexually assaulted by a coworker, and fired for denouncing him. Another one was forced to work with the man who had groped her.
One woman said she was raped, but the incident was misclassified as merely harassment.
“The NSF said it improved safety in Antarctica last year. It now requires Leidos, the prime contractor, to immediately report incidents of sexual assault and harassment. The NSF said it also created an office to deal with such complaints, provided a confidential victim’s advocate, and established a 24-hour helpline.
Leidos told Congress in December it would install peepholes on dorm room doors, limit access to master keys that could open multiple bedrooms, and give teams in the field an extra satellite phone.”
Even after the report was issued by the National Science Foundation, the episodes of violence did not stop.
Business Insider reported:
“A man on a search and rescue team at the US National Science Foundation base in Antarctica was arrested and transported to Hawaii after being accused of assaulting a female colleague, according to court documents filed in the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii.
Officials charged Stephen Tyler Bieneman with assault within the maritime and territorial jurisdiction, according to a criminal complaint filed on December 12.
The incident occurred at the McMurdo Station[…] according to a federal affidavit filed by Deputy US Marshal Marc E. Tunstall, a federal agent stationed in Antarctica.
[…] The woman, a US national, told Tunstall that while she and Bieneman — who she described as a casual friend — were sitting on a couch, she tried to prank him by taking his name tag and jokingly stating that she would not give it back. She then said, according to court documents, that they both stood up and moved behind the couch when Bieneman ‘put her on her back, placed his left shin over her throat, and began going through her coverall pocket’ to find his name tag.”
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