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

News@lemmy.world – 850 points – 1 years ago

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

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.

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I found this study about the differences (but it's from 2014, please tell me if you find a more recent one) The Impact of Sex and Gender on Adaptation to Space: Executive Summary.

TL;DR female astronauts have, according to the study:

a higher risk of cancer (a 45-year-old man has a 344-day limit in space to be safe versus a 187-day limit for a 45-year-old woman)
more orthostatic intolerance
more UTIs (which makes sense as women on earth are also more likely to have UTIs)
less vision impairment compared to male astronauts (no clinically significant cases of VIIP syndrome)
less hearing problems (men show a more rapid decline in the left ear and in general like on Earth)

Keep in mind that this data is not the best because only around 20% of people that had been on the ISS at the time were women and because male astronauts are more likely to come from a military background.

less hearing problems (men show a more rapid decline in the left ear and in general as well)

Did the study mention why the left ear was more of a problem?

No, here is the relevant paragraph:

Hearing sensitivity, when measured at most frequencies, declines much more rapidly in male astronauts than it does in female astronauts. These LSAH derived data represent a wide age range of subjects (i.e., four decades) and show a more rapid decline in hearing in the left ear, for men only. Within the general population, hearing also declines more rapidly in men than in women, due in part to environmental factors or occupational exposure (e.g., construction or factory work). No evidence suggests that the sex-based hearing differences in the astronaut population are related to microgravity exposure, and the small sample size of female astronauts precludes making any definitive conclusions.

Thanks. It's so weird that it affects the left ear of men more. Love to know what makes the left ear more susceptible to damage than the right.

Fascinating. We def need more info on this, and a bigger sample size.