Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Ronne and Jennie Darlington who spent a year (1947-8) in the Antarctic Peninsula with
their husbands, as part of the privately organized Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition. In
October 1957, two Pan-American Airlines flight attendants, Patricia Hepinstall and Ruth
Kelly, working on a commercial flight over the Antarctic, landed at McMurdo Base. In
1960-1, the accomplished Australian artist Nel Law accompanied her husband Philip Law
to Antarctica. The opportunities for women to discover the Antarctic were limited, however,
and would remain so for decades.
When Ernest Shackleton was asked about the possible participation of women, he replied
that there were 'no vacancies for the opposite sex on the Expedition'. His view was in no
way unique or unusual. If there was an accompanying ideology to polar exploration, it was
informed as much by gender as it was by geopolitics, science, and empire. While men may
have performed gendered tasks such as cleaning and cooking within research stations and
huts, they did so safe in the knowledge that everyone took their turns away from the gaze of
any women - thus avoiding emasculation of sorts. And only the British, as far as I know,
relished a cross-dressing party during the winter solstice - having female colleagues
watching would, I suspect, have made said participants look a little silly. By way of
contrast, Norwegian expeditions had designated cooks, and did not pack women's clothing
in their knaps acts of exploration and discoverysgovernmentacks. Or so I have been told.
Nonetheless, women performed a variety of roles in the context of the Antarctic. While they
have been physically absent from the discovery process, their presence was invoked when
men were planting flags, issuing proclamations, constructing bases, and carrying out
exploratory activities (claimant labour, in other words). Vast tracts of land were named
after women - Marie Byrd Land, Queen Mary Land, Mount Caroline Mikkelsen. These
names were submitted and approved by all-male bodies such as the US Board on
Geographic Names. Women worked for government departments and organizations
responsible for exploration and discovery, and later scientific programmes. In February
1999, I had the pleasure of meeting Dame Margaret Anstee, who started her career in the
late 1940s in the Foreign Office working for the chief polar advisor, Dr Brian Roberts.
Dame Margaret finally got to visit the Antarctic some 50 years later as a passenger on a
cruise ship, after being told by her employer the Foreign Office that she was not allowed to
go. More recently, Argentina and Chile have flown pregnant women down to their bases in
order to strengthen their genealogical connections to the polar continent.
Scientifically, women began to make their presence felt from the 1950s onwards after
overcoming prejudice and sexism within both civilian and military organizations. Women
had to overcome sexist assumptions about their ability to cope with the ice, base life, and
the last male bastion - the over-wintering period. But progress was slow. In 1956, a
