---
title: "Women in Antarctica"
chunk: 1/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Antarctica"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:04:25.983025+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Women have been exploring the regions around Antarctica for many centuries. The most celebrated "first" for women in Antarctica was in 1935 when Caroline Mikkelsen became the first woman to set foot on one of Antarctica's islands. Early male explorers, such as Richard Byrd, named areas of Antarctica after wives and female heads of state. As Antarctica moved from a place of exploration and conquest to a scientific frontier, women worked to be included in the sciences. The first countries to have female scientists working in Antarctica were the Soviet Union, South Africa and Argentina.
Besides exploring and working as scientists, women have also played supportive roles as wives, fund-raisers, publicists, historians, curators and administrators of organizations and services that support Antarctic operations. Many early women on Antarctica were the wives of explorers. Some women worked with Antarctica from afar, crafting policies for a place they had never seen. Women who wished to have larger roles in Antarctica and on the continent itself had to "overcome gendered assumptions about the ice and surmount bureaucratic inertia". As women began to break into fields in Antarctica, they found that it could be difficult to compete against men who already had the "expeditioner experience" needed for permanent science positions. Women who were qualified for expeditions or jobs in Antarctica were less likely to be selected than men, even after a 1995 study by Jane Mocellin showed that women cope better than men with the Antarctic environment.

== Historic barriers against inclusion ==

Most early policies and practices, including the construction and creation of Antarctic organizations, were created initially by men. Women were originally excluded from early exploration in Antarctica based on the opinion that women could not handle the extremes in temperature or crisis situations. Vivian Fuchs, who was in charge of the British Antarctic Survey in the 1960s, believed that women could not carry heavy equipment and that Antarctic facilities were unsuitable for women. The United States believed for many years that the climate of Antarctic was too harsh for women.
Antarctica was seen by many men as a place where men could imagine themselves heroic conquerors. In Western culture, frontier territories are often associated with masculinity. Antarctica itself was envisioned by many male explorers as a "virginal woman" or "monstrous feminine body" to be conquered by men. Women were often "invoked in terms of place naming and territorial conquest and later even encouraged to have babies in Antarctica." Using women as territorial conquest is literal in the way that Argentina flew pregnant women to Antarctica to give birth and stake a national claim to the area.
Silvia Morella de Palma was the first woman to give birth in Antarctica, delivering 3.4 kg (7 lb 8 oz) Emilio Palma at the Argentine Esperanza base 7 January 1978.
Men enjoyed having a space that was free of women and which, in the late 1940s, "allowed them to continue the kind of male companionship and adventure they had enjoyed during the Second World War."  In one news article about Antarctica written in 1958, the writer describes the use of dazzlement: "On the womanless continent, the purpose of the dazzlement is not to catch the eye of a flirtatious blonde, but to attract spotters in the event that the explorers become lost in the frozen waste." Men's space in Antarctica resisted change. In the 1980s, there was an attempt by men to memorialize the "Sistine ceiling" of the Weddell hut in Antarctica as an Australian national heritage site of "high significance." The "Sistine ceiling" was covered in 92 different pinups of women from the 1970s and 1980s. This represented a "male's only club" in which participants believed women would spoil the "purity of a homosocial work, and play, environment." In 1983, the San Bernardino County Sun newspaper published an article about Antarctica stating that it "is still one of the last macho redoubts, where men are men and women are superfluous." One scientist, Lyle McGinnis, who had been going to Antarctica since 1957, resented women in the field saying that "men never grouse." He believed that women complained and needed "comfort." Not all men felt that way. Other men felt that women's presence made life in Antarctica better and one male engineer stated that without women around, "men are pigs." Sociologist Charles Moskos stated that as more women are introduced to a group, there is less aggression and a "more civil culture develops."
Many of the careers in Antarctica are in the sciences and women faced barriers there as well. As women attempted to work in science, arguments using biological determinism, evolutionary psychology and popular notions of neurobiology were used as excuses as to why there were fewer women in the sciences. These arguments described how "women are ill-adapted on evolutionary grounds for science and the competitive environment of the laboratory." Some women described feeling that they were "a bit of a joke" working in Antarctica and felt that men regarded them as incapable.
Antarctic exploration and science research was often facilitated by national navies, who often did not want women on their ships. The United States Navy used the excuse that "sanitation facilities were too primitive" on Antarctica as an excuse to bar women. The U.S. Navy also considered Antarctica a "male-only bastion." Admiral George Dufek said in 1956 that "women would join American Teams in the Antarctic over his dead body." He also believed that women's presence on Antarctica "would wreck men's illusions of being heroes and frontiersmen." Military groups also were worried about "sexual misconduct."
Change was slow as women began to try to become part of Antarctic exploration and research. An article run in The Daily Herald newspaper of Chicago in 1974 described women finally coming to Antarctica as integrating the "land with a definite feminine touch." The article described women's perfumed smells, ways of entertaining guests on Antarctica and the "dainty feet" of Caroline Mikkelsen. Eventually both the "presence and impact of female Antarctic researchers has increased rapidly."