But in the 80's, much like today, women typically didn't volunteer to spend 6 months in that kind of job and/or environment. If I remember the documentaries and sleeve notes for this film correctly, they only had one woman on the film crew, because no women WANTED to spend the time filming in British Columbia. I guarantee an Antarctica research team would be spending more time in the frozen back of beyond than the shooting time this film took.
It'd be unrealistic to put women in there just for the hell of it.
As for the re-quel (I'm using that to refer to poor attempts to make prequels that might as well be remakes), well, there were only two of them there, so I'm not sure that proves your point anyway. Only 1 of them seemed to have a job. The other was killed swiftly and did nothing of note except try to kill the other one. She literally had no role in the film except to make up the quota. And even if you accept that as being set in 1981, the fact it took a Scandinavian research team to incorporate women instead of the US one, that tells you the US were not that progressive anyway.
As for the original, again, if my memory serves well, there was only one, woman, and SHE was just the damsel-in-distress-plus-love-interest for the male lead.
The weird thing is though, I seem to remember that, like Alien, the roles in the Carpenter film were written without specifically being to be male or female, so at some point a decision was made that might not have been the film-maker's. Possibly another example of studio interference.
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