It has been five years since the MeToo movement made headlines and prompted governments to pledge to fight sexual harassment and abuse, but apparently the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which handles the country's Antarctic research program, wasn't affected. The latest report, commissioned by the NSF, shows that 72% of women and 48% of men employed at the distant mission believe that the program has problems with sexual harassment at the workplace.
The results of the report are based on a survey carried out in 2021 among both scientists and the supporting staff of the Antarctic mission. It showed that women often did not feel safe working in the Antarctic research program.
"Every woman I knew down there had an assault or harassment experience," one interviewee said, while another one added: "I can’t in good conscience encourage more women to come down here as it is right now."
The report, however, gives no specific numbers on the amount of sexual harassment or rape cases over the past three years that were reviewed. Even if it did, the picture would be far from complete as many interviewees said they felt filing reports was futile because they believed the perpetrators mentioned in them had not been held accountable for their actions in the past.
Only 26% of female interviewees from the research program said they thought the offenders were punished for their actions. Some 46% of male respondents thought the sexual misconduct acts were properly handled.
"Many of the community members we spoke with feel deeply betrayed by what they experience as a failure to hold offenders accountable and anemic efforts to prevent or appropriately respond to sexual assault and harassment," the report noted.
The reports about the harassment at the Antarctic mission are filled to the HR department, but are effectively handled by various institutions, companies, US agencies – depending on which part of the mission the victim and perpetrator were working on. These entities, located physically away from the potential crime scene, apparently failed to investigate the claims and as a result act on them.
The cases of misconduct were reported from across the Antarctic stations, but the big one called "McMurdo" was the "epicenter" of these claims, the report says. The NSF promised it will work on a solution to the issue of both sexual misconduct and lack of trust in reporting these cases in the Antarctic mission.
"We are still working to try to understand how we got to this point, and how we move forward. We want a prevention-oriented environment; we want people who have had a negative experience to feel comfortable reporting; we want that reporting to be effective; we want a disciplinary action taken if it’s warranted," NSF’s Office of Polar Programs' chief, Roberta Marinelli, stated in an interview for the Science news outlet.
However, this is not the first time the NSF makes such a promise. The issue was first raised back in 2017 at the height of the MeToo movement, when one of the members of the Antarctic mission, geophysicist Jane Willenbring, shared her story of being bullied and sexually harassed by a graduate advisor back in 1999.
The NFS vowed in 2017 to consider reports filed with the universities’ Title IX departments, reviewing gender discrimination cases, when making funding decisions in the future. However, as the 2022 report shows – little progress has been made to far to deal with the issue.
The report of the NFS comes hot on heels of another one prepared by the Pentagon detailing a recent sharp surge in number of sexual assault reports in the military. The number jumped by 13% in 2021 with 36,000 service members reporting to have had experienced unwanted sexual contact.