<p>There are real issues with crime and sexual assault in the boom times coming because of natural gas and oil up in the dakotas, which isn’t surprising. Boom towns from the klondike to Oklahoma and Texas and now the Dakotas tend to attract young men in droves, and the ratio of men to women is ridiculously high, plus these are places that were once sleepy small towns, and now are facing surges of population and sadly, those wishing to exploit that, and they don’t exactly have huge police departments and such.</p>
<p>That said, I think it would be also be unwise to reject a job without knowing more facts, like where you would be working and who you would be working for. It is hard to make blanket statements, someone else made the point that it depends on the area and how they treat employees, a major oil company, afraid of massive lawsuits if something happened, would be a lot more likely IMO to make an effort to protect their workers, where independants and wildcat firms may not care (get sued, they disappear…). </p>
<p>I also agree that if you take the job, being able to protect yourself is important. Going out to a bar and getting drunk would not be bright, nor would drinking in situations, like a party at someone’s home you don’t know, where you don’t know the situation well. It is very different (as risky as it can be) to get drunk at college than it would be in a situation like seems to be happening in the boom areas. It is like when you live in a sketchy area of a town or city, you always need to be situationally aware of what is going on, and be precautious with everything. </p>
<p>Bullet, your point is well taken, but it isn’t always as simple as push the guy away or hit him in the groin, when these attacks happen often it is multiple men and/or the use of drugs and such, let alone guns. Not unlike the military, the other problem is the perpetrators know that local law enforcement and employers don’t necessarily consider sexual assaults like this to be a problem, it is often viewed as being another ‘he said she said’ situation, or worse, as a domestic squabble or the view that somehow if she really wanted to, the victim could have protected herself and not have it happen, so it must have been somewhat consensual. </p>
<p>For the OP, I would recommend taking classes in self awareness and self defense that various groups offer women as well as the various pieces of advice others gave. A lot of it may be the employer, too, and you may be able to do some research on the company and see if anyone has anything on them (not likely, but you never know). One of the things I suspect is that so much awareness has been shed on issues in the boomtowns, that both town governments, state governments and employers are likely to be reacting and trying to fix things, if only because of the threat of serious litigation, if the situation is really that bad (and again, I don’t know that for a fact), it would make it very hard to defend is lawsuits started, the employers or governments couldn’t say “I wasn’t aware” when it has been so heavily reported.</p>
<p>It is like everything else, the best answer is to be fully prepared and make a decision based on facts and your own level of self confidence in being able to deal with it.</p>