WOMEN IN ANTARCTICA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20760, 31 December 1930, Page 5

WOMEN IN ANTARCTICA.

LURE OF ADVENTURE.

Careers for women in Antarctica are a possibility suggested by Lieut.-Com-mander L. N. Bernacchi, R.N., who has spent fivo years nil told on the ice continent, and is well qualified to speak with authority.

Ho was with the Southern Cross expedition from 1898 to 3900, and returned a year later with Scott's Discovery expedition, which was frozen in at McMurdo Sound for nearly three years. Ilis opinion is that thero is no reason why women should bo excluded from exploration in Antarctic regions, provided they have tho necessary scientific qualifications and expresses tho belief that women geologists, wireless operators, photographers and artists would bo quite as successful as men.

Women luive proved again and again that they possess a steady ncrvo and an unexcelled capacity for endurance. They aro able to stand extremo cold as well as men, probably better; and abovo all, they nro infinitely more patient than rami.

The days when great privation and physical effort wore synonymous with polar exploration aro gone for ever. No more do explorers "pulley-hauley" their own sledges over the ico fields. In physical strength man is superior, but the importance of physical strength has declined with tho onward course of science, which provides more and more substitutes for brute force. Antarctic exploration for women has a great advantago over exploration in any other part of the world.

Illness is unknown there. Because of the intense cold and the absence of both animal and vegetable lifo, disease germs cannot livo there and tho air is pure and bracing. A continent of fivo and a-half million square miles awaits the adventurous, and with tho development of wireless and airplane and caterpillar transport further exploration expeditions will not bo long delayed. Who will bo tho first woman to experience tho thrill of exploration of a continent still in tho glacial ago?