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Terribly, 59% is actually lower than the rate of sexual harassment for women in the USA, which is around 77% according to the National Sexual Violence Resource

by redeux 2y ago

Terribly, 59% is actually lower than the rate of sexual harassment for women in the USA, which is around 77% according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. https://www.nsvrc.org/resource/facts-behind-metoo-movement-national-study-sexual-harassment-and-assault https://www.nsvrc.org/resource/facts-behind-metoo-movement-n...

rafram 2y ago
77% is over a lifetime, but 59% is just over the one or two summers that someone spends at McMurdo, so it makes sense that it would be lower. But if there weren’t a serious culture of harassment, you’d think it would be much lower.
petsfed 2y ago
I want to buttress a sibling comment and dig into how misleading your quoted statistics are. While there are complicating factors, in general, probabilities add linearly. So for the average woman in the US, who lives for 77 years, she therefore has a 1% chance of being sexually harassed during any 1 year of her life. Obviously, this follows some distribution, but still, the odds of it happening in any one year of her life probably peaks around 5-10%. I couldn't find good data on how many seasons the average Antarctic worker puts in, but let's say its around 10. That means the average woman working in Antarctica has a 5.9% chance of getting sexually harassed per year. Except, the average contract length in Antarctica is 4-6 months. So while a woman in the US has a 0.5% chance of being sexually harassed in a given 6 month time frame, a woman in Antarctica has an average 11.8% chance of being sexually harassed for the same time frame. Do you understand the difference?
- thelaxiankey 2y ago
  not sure about anyone else, but the scientists I know who worked there only stayed for a few seasons, which makes this pretty damning.
- bitcurious 2y ago
  >While there are complicating factors, in general, probabilities add linearly. So for the average woman in the US, who lives for 77 years, she therefore has a 1% chance of being sexually harassed during any 1 year of her life. Obviously the average survey respondent was not 77 years old, so the math here is wrong. Other assumptions we could make: prepubescent and post-menopausal women are not being sexually harassed at the same rate as women of reproductive age. I think your point would stand with steelman math, so why strawman it?
  - petsfed 2y ago
    Because my 5-year-old daughter has experienced something akin to sexual harassment. Its grim out there, but its far grimmer in Antarctica, and other isolated places where victims have little recourse in the moment [0]. I went out of my way to provide as conservative of numbers as possible, so if that's a strawman, I don't know what to tell you. Even a cursory glance at incomplete statistics [1] on the subject show that the per-year rate of harassment at the peak ages is commensurate with the per-contract (again 4-6 month hitch, so double or triple that rate to get the per-year average) rate of all women in Antarctica. 0. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2024.1461655/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles... 1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7485046/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7485046/

by redeux 2y ago

rafram 2y ago

77% is over a lifetime, but 59% is just over the one or two summers that someone spends at McMurdo, so it makes sense that it would be lower. But if there weren’t a serious culture of harassment, you’d think it would be much lower.

petsfed 2y ago

I want to buttress a sibling comment and dig into how misleading your quoted statistics are. While there are complicating factors, in general, probabilities add linearly. So for the average woman in the US, who lives for 77 years, she therefore has a 1% chance of being sexually harassed during any 1 year of her life. Obviously, this follows some distribution, but still, the odds of it happening in any one year of her life probably peaks around 5-10%. I couldn't find good data on how many seasons the average Antarctic worker puts in, but let's say its around 10. That means the average woman working in Antarctica has a 5.9% chance of getting sexually harassed per year. Except, the average contract length in Antarctica is 4-6 months. So while a woman in the US has a 0.5% chance of being sexually harassed in a given 6 month time frame, a woman in Antarctica has an average 11.8% chance of being sexually harassed for the same time frame. Do you understand the difference?

thelaxiankey 2y ago
not sure about anyone else, but the scientists I know who worked there only stayed for a few seasons, which makes this pretty damning.
bitcurious 2y ago
>While there are complicating factors, in general, probabilities add linearly. So for the average woman in the US, who lives for 77 years, she therefore has a 1% chance of being sexually harassed during any 1 year of her life. Obviously the average survey respondent was not 77 years old, so the math here is wrong. Other assumptions we could make: prepubescent and post-menopausal women are not being sexually harassed at the same rate as women of reproductive age. I think your point would stand with steelman math, so why strawman it?
- petsfed 2y ago
  Because my 5-year-old daughter has experienced something akin to sexual harassment. Its grim out there, but its far grimmer in Antarctica, and other isolated places where victims have little recourse in the moment [0]. I went out of my way to provide as conservative of numbers as possible, so if that's a strawman, I don't know what to tell you. Even a cursory glance at incomplete statistics [1] on the subject show that the per-year rate of harassment at the peak ages is commensurate with the per-contract (again 4-6 month hitch, so double or triple that rate to get the per-year average) rate of all women in Antarctica. 0. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2024.1461655/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles... 1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7485046/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7485046/