Women working in Antarctica say they were left to fend for themselves against sexual harassers

If those in charge weren’t going to protect her from the man she feared would kill her, she figured, she needed to protect herself. It wasn’t like she could escape. They were all stuck there together on the ice.

“If he came anywhere near me, I was going to start swinging at him,” Monahon says. “I decided that I was going to survive.”

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.

Monahan believes she only escaped physical harm in Antarctica because of her colleagues, not management.

Antarctica’s ancient ice sheet and remoteness make it ideal for scientists studying everything from the earliest moments of the universe to changes in the planet’s climate.

The population at McMurdo, the hub of U.S. operations, usually swells from 200-300 in the southern winter to over 1,000 in the summer. Typically, around 70% are men.

Funded and overseen by the NSF, the U.S. Antarctic Program is run by a tangle of contractors and subcontractors, with billions of dollars at stake. Since 2017, Leidos has held the main contract, now worth over $200 million per year.

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.

In one case, a woman who reported a colleague had groped her was made to work alongside him again. In another, a woman who told her employer she was sexually assaulted was later fired. Another woman said that bosses at the base downgraded her allegations from rape to harassment.

Kathleen Naeher, the chief operating officer of the civil group at Leidos, told a congressional committee in December that they 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.

Izzi, PAE’s HR representative, called Monahon into a meeting. Izzi’s superior, Holly Newman, was on the phone in Denver. Monahon recorded the conversation. “The investigation was completed. We took appropriate action,” Newman says in the recording.

She doesn’t specify what action was taken other than to say the person was no longer on the ice....Newman then says problems with alcohol and people “hurting other people” have been occurring in Antarctica since “way before” she first visited in 2015.