This editorial summarised the findings from a special journal issue exploring approaches to considering gender and sex on work, including occupational exposures.
10 studies were part of the special issue. All studies were based in high income countries, work was largely paid settings (rather than volunteer), and mostly constrained to evaluating gender & sex as male/female binary variables (an important limitation).
Results:
Expectedly, women & men experience differences in occupational exposures & health throughout all stages of their working lives. For instance in construction trades, women were significantly more likely to self-report than men high perceived stress & being injured at work in the last year.
Women were more likely than men to receive surgery for work-related carpal tunnel. Men experience more violent events at work whereas women experience more post-traumatic stress reactions to workplace violence. However in trying to explain the biomechanical differences needed for such an effect, authors conclude that pure biomechanical mechanisms aren’t plausible & thus other biological & social factors were also important determinants in the differences b.t. men & women.
At the end of working life, men & women have different part-time employment opportunities following retirement. Both face precarious jobs with limited protection & adverse working conditions and women have the double burden of paid & unpaid work into their late years.
Despite the now extensive & growing participation of women in the paid labour force there remains extensive gender segregation across jobs. In one study where a reduction in sickness leave was found between years 2005 and 2013, it may be the case that sickness leave decrease was largely due to a decrease in male-dominant industries skewing the results. Factors like men’s increased ill-health related exit from work and reduced willingness to seek medical advice or increased presenteeism may have been factors.
Gender minority groups in construction have different & often more hazardous exposures to psychosocial & physical hazards than workers from the gender majority. Further, women more regularly reported bullying & harassment than men during welder & electrician apprenticeships.
Men have greater exposures to carcinogens and that concerningly “Harmful physical and chemical exposures have become so institutionalized in ‘men’s’ work that it is considered ‘normal” (p390). Some other data suggests that men may be up to 10 times more likely to be killed in workplace incidents.
Women more often reported problems with ill-fitting PPE, but men more often reported higher exposures to dust & working at height without barriers. Men were more likely to face more adverse work exposures, while women face more precarious employment conditions.
Women seem to be more affected by health conditions accumulated earlier in working life so that the chance of women finding & keeping a job as they age is lower than for men.
Interestingly, one study noted that higher levels of supervisor support at work was linked with lower work stress among women but not for men.
For the sex of the aggressor for serious violent work events with male aggressors leading to post-traumatic reactions among women but not men.
Men & women reported similar levels of marital strain & caregiving responsibilities but differences were noted in hours per week on domestic tasks.
Overall, all papers demonstrated that including gender & sex remained challenging. Further, only one study “used inclusive language in their exposure and health assessment questionnaire so that transgendered women could participate” (p391).
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