Antarctica: wild continent of snow, ice and, increasingly, women

Constanza Mendoza Godoy, logistics manager and engineer, dealing with waste on her base on King George Island, Antarctica. Every two days she checks waste water to ensure it is safe before being released into the sea. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

For almost as long as the continent has been known of, Antarctica, a wild, white expanse of ice shelves, glaciers and mountainous ridges at the foot of the globe, has been the domain of men.

But images in the popular imagination of bearded men boldly heading into snowstorms could slowly be fading into the whiteness.