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a few weeks in a field camp near Mc-Murdo Station, the principal base, 800 miles from the Pole. The event drew headlines such as "Powderpuff Explorers to Invade the South Pole." Women wintering over on the ice was another matter, and it wasn't until 1974 that the authorities finally tiptoed into the issue and permitted two women Dr. MicheleRaney at South Pole. Sign lists names of those who've served and how many miles away it is to their hometowns. CAST ALTIrit Ullfl? HILCS I7 mm fi omen 1 0 20-1 male-female ratio can be a confusing experience i 3 Conquer nm 1 1 1 ine South Pole ur 1NCE THE DAYS OF THE EARLY POLAR EXPLORERS Shackleton, Amundsen, Scon, Peary and Byrd Antarctica has been laced with the lore of heroism.

The world's southernmost extremity has been viewed as a challenge to masculine strength, courage and endurance. In the minds of many, Antarctica still is one of the last macho a nun and a middle-aged biologist to spend an entire year at McMurdo. In 1979, Dr. Michele Raney, then 27, became the first woman to winter over at the South Pole Station. Today, growing numbers of women scientists and students come here for the summer months, female Navy personnel have integral roles in transport and supply, and others looking for adventure hire on as cooks, drivers, janitors, office workers, carpenters, electricians and heavy equipment operators.

The two women currently at the Pole are Loreen Utz of Herndon, Va. a scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, and Mary Vickers of Coldspring, Ky, a virologist. They are due to leave in November after 12 months at the station. This year, the U.S.

will spend about $80 million supporting a variety of scientific research. During the summer October through February some 1000 Americans live and work on the continent. During the perpetual twilight and darkness of the eight-month austral winter, when temperatures regularly plunge below minus 100 degrees only about 100 persons man the four U.S. stations, essentially trapped and unreachable even for the most dire emergency. Most of the women spend the four summer months in McMurdo, an untidy sprawl of about 130 buildings, dirt streets and tangled utility lines reminiscent of an early boomtown thrown up overnight over a field of Texas crude or Yukon gold.

Plunged into McMurdo's mining camp atmosphere with bars as boozy as a Last Chance Saloon the 20-1 male-female ratio can be a confusing experience. "It makes your head spin, all this attention from all these men," laughs Marilyn Woody of San Juan Capistrano, redoubts, where men are men and women are superfluous. But times are changing on the South Polar ice cap, as they are elsewhere around the globe. Antarctica today hasn't exactly flowered ith femininity, but its "For Men Only" sign definitely has come down. "We've only been allowed to work dow here for a little more than 10 years," says Dr.

Gisela Drcschhoff, "but we've proved ourselves over and over again." Dr. Dreschhoff is typical of the type of woman who comes to Antarctica to contribute. An assistant professor of physics at the University of Kansas and a widely respected scientist, she and a woman associate once spent seven hours working outdoors at the South Pole on a day when the temperature was 30 below zero and a 30-mile-an-hour wind pushed the chill factor even lower. After hauling their equipment back to the station, they were wanning themselves with coffee in the galley when two construction workers flopped down at a nearby table. The men had been outside for 20 minutes and were forced to call it quits because it was too cold.

The U.S. Navy kept women off Antarctica until 1969, often citing the argument that sanitation facilities were too primitive. It finally relented under pressure and allowed four women scientists to spend BY MICHAEL SATCHELL PACE 16 JUNE 1983 PARADE MAGAZINE.