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Abstract
1983 was a year of firsts for women in two of the world’s leading institutions of scientific exploration: NASA sent a woman into space for the first time, and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) sent women to Antarctica for the first time. But by 1986, while female astronauts had continued to launch into space, women remained barred from applying to nearly three-quarters of BAS’s advertised positions. An author writing in The Geographical Magazine expressed frustration: “If women can go into space they can certainly do field work in Antarctica”. The Director of BAS expressed a different sentiment: “No valid parallels can be made … with space flight”. Using the overlapping histories of BAS and NASA as a starting point, this paper offers a way to think through the relational trajectories of Antarctica and Outer Space. It applies an institutionalist frame to hundreds of previously unexamined records in the BAS Archives as well as recent literature dealing with gender at NASA, demonstrating the value of this frame to shed new light on relational histories and gendered spatialities. This approach grounds our view of Antarctica and Outer Space in histories of gendered labour; it also contributes to growing critique of frontier exceptionality by illustrating the historical entanglement of Antarctica and Outer Space with broader processes of gendered change.
Acknowledgements
The researcher would like to thank Dr. Michael Bravo of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge for guidance and feedback, as well as two anonymous reviewers for valuable input on a previous version of this paper.
Notes
1 Ptolemy, “Don’t send your Daughter”.
2 Laws to Allsopp, 19 April 1985, 19/47/444(1), BAS.
3 Jones, The Last Great Quest; Spufford, I May Be Some Time.
4 Chipman, Women on the Ice; Rothblum, Weinstock and Morris, Women in the Antarctic; Burns, Just Tell Them I Survived.
5 Bloom, Gender on Ice; Glasberg, Antarctica as Cultural Critique.
6 Lewander, “Women and Civilisation”; Dodds, “Settling and Unsettling”; Collis, “The Australian Antarctic Territory”.
7 Lewander, “Women and Civilisation”.
8 Ibid.; Dodds, “Settling and Unsettling”; Collis, “The Australian Antarctic Territory”; Burns, “Women in Antarctica”.
9 Mahoney and Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change, 8.
10 E.g. Waylen, “Informal Institutions”; Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell, “New Institutionalism”; Acker, “Inequality Regimes”; Browne, Sex Segregation.
11 Foster, Integrating Women.
12 Kevles, Almost Heaven.
13 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut.
14 Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff.
15 E.g. Glasberg, Antarctica as Cultural Critique; Howkins, “The Significance of the Frontier”; Rosner, “Gender and Polar Studies”.
16 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut, 14.
17 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut; Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff.
18 Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff.
19 Foster, Integrating Women.
20 Ibid., 51.
21 Ibid.
22 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut, 1.
23 Benjamin, Rocket Dreams, 46.
24 Redfield, “The Half-Life of Empire”.
25 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut.
26 Ibid.
27 Cronin, “Richard Byrd”.
28 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut.
29 Foster, Integrating Women, 13.
30 Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff.
31 Ibid., 91.
32 Ibid., 97.
33 Ibid., 97.
34 Foster, Integrating Women.
35 Ibid., 59.
36 Foster, Integrating Women, 60.
37 Ibid., 61.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., 60.
40 Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff, 91.
41 Foster, Integrating Women, 71.
42 Foster, Integrating Women.
43 Ibid.
44 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut.
45 Foster, Integrating Women.
46 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut.
47 Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff, 136.
48 Foster, Integrating Women.
49 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut.
50 Ibid., 144.
51 Foster, Integrating Women.
52 Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut.
53 Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff, 135.
54 Foster, Integrating Women.
55 Ibid.
56 Graves, “Would You Go to Mars?”
57 Collis, “Mawson and Mirnyy”.
58 Curphey, interviewed by Lee.
59 Base Commander’s Manual Revised Edition 1978, AD6/13/1/3.
60 Laws to Bachelard, 13 March 1984, AD3/2/234/255/01(2).
61 Sloman to Biggs, 22 December 1975, AD3/2/234/255/01(1).
62 Dodds, “Settling and Unsettling,” 505.
63 Salmon, comment on Sloman to Biggs, 18 November 1975, AD3/2/234/255/01(1).
64 AD3/2/234/255/01(1).
65 Salmon to Laws, 7 September 1979, AD3/2/234/255/01(1).
66 Biggs to Sloman, 19 February 1976, AD3/2/234/255/01(1).
67 Meeting minutes, 30 October 1979, AD3/2/234/255/01(1).
68 Laws to Beverton, 5 December 1979, AD3/2/234/255/01(1).
69 Thomson, “An Oral History”.
70 Laws, interviewed by Lee.
71 Thomson, “An Oral History”.
72 Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
73 Yanchinski, “No Sex Please”.
74 Press Clippings, AD3/4/8–14.
75 Ptolemy, “Don’t Send Your Daughter”.
76 Laws to Allsopp, 19 April 1985, 19/47/444(1).
77 See Walton, interviewed Lee; Clarke, interviewed by Lee; Thomson, “An Oral History”.
78 [Redacted] to Swithinbank, 15 April 1985, 19/47/444(1).
79 Laws, 19 April 1985, 19/47/444(1).
80 Salmon to Laws and Bawden, 29 April 1985, 19/47/444(1).
81 Sloman to Biggs, 22 December 1975; AD3/2/234/255/01(1).
82 Salmon to Laws, 12 December 1984, 19/47/444(1).
83 Drewry, interviewed by Lee.
84 Director’s Committee Meeting Minutes, AD3/3/12/2/418(4–6).
85 Drewry, interviewed by Lee.
86 Director’s Committee Minutes, 29 May 1987, AD3/3/12/2/418(4).
87 “Women and BAS Operations,” AD3/3/82/2/1357.
88 Director’s Committee meeting minutes, 10 October 1988, AD3/3/12/2/418(5).
89 Heywood to staff, 3 April 1996, 19/47/444(1).
90 BAS, “HR Team”.
91 Foster, Integrating Women, 61.
92 Laws to Allsopp, undated [likely 1986], 19/47/444(1).
93 E.g. Roberts, The European Antarctic; Dodds and Nuttall, The Scramble for the Poles; Glasberg, Antarctica as Cultural Critique.
94 Kuklick and Kohler, Science in the Field; Bloom, Gender on Ice.
95 Glasberg, Antarctica as Cultural Critique.
96 Foster, Integrating Women; Oreskes, “Objectivity or Heroism?”.
97 Bloom, Gender on Ice.
98 MacDonald, “Anti-Astropolitik,” 609.