New book: Hidden Health Hazards in Women's Work

New book: Hidden Health Hazards in Women's Work

This year - June 2008-June 2009 is the International Labour Organisation's year on the theme of 'Gender Equality - the Heart of Decent Work'. As part of this, the month of April 2009 takes the theme of women's occupational health and safety. It almost slipped by unnoticed....

Just in the nick of time, on Thursday April 30th, in the Beehive at 5pm, the first book on women's occupational health and safety ever to be published in New Zealand will be launched. The title is "Hidden Hazards in Women's Work". It is published in Wellington by Dunmore Press. The launch will be hosted by Green MP Sue Bradford.

The book has things to say which are likely to engage the interest of employers, employees, unions, policy makers, women and men - anyone at all with an interest in occupational health and public health. For example:

Working-age women who are in paid work enjoy better health than those who are not employed (the same applies to men). But paradoxically, for some men and women paid work causes disease, disability and premature death. Women have far fewer fatal and disabling accidents at work than men. But internationally women carry around two thirds of the burden of work-related disease, and it is estimated that four fifths of work-related deaths are caused by disease rather than injury.

For an assortment of reasons, discussed in this book, women's occupational health and safety needs are often overlooked in health and safety policy and practices, including, at present in New Zealand, the training of health and safety reps. So the book aims to shine a light on those hidden hazards. For example, due to occupational segregation, women and men still do different work. Women's work is often presumed to be lighter, easier and safer than men's, and so receives less attention. This book begins by exposing the hidden health hazards that affect women in a wide range of occupations. The book's cover picture - of a hazard cone next to an office chair - tries to encapsulate the apparent contradiction of a job that superficially appears healthy and safe but where various hazards lurk, some of them extremely serious.

Women's work isn't only different from men's. It's also unequal. Women on average work slightly longer total hours than men but are paid for considerably fewer of the hours they work. Women still do around two thirds of unpaid work. Unpaid work contains health hazards but there are fewer protections for people working unpaid. There's a chapter in the book about the health and safety of new mothers at home.

In their paid work, women receive lower average hourly rates and occupy fewer of the senior and decision-making positions. Although women are now even better educated than men, women earn less than men with similar qualifications. They're also less likely to have jobs with decision-making power or authority, and are more likely to be in jobs with few or no career steps - so they can't so easily improve their earnings. International research shows that people with better earnings and higher status jobs have better health than those in subordinate positions.

And sometimes female-dominated and male-dominated jobs require very similar qualifications, skills and levels of commitment but the jobs where women predominate have fewer opportunities for pay and career progression, leading to effort-reward imbalances, which in turn have negative health implications. The book contains a New Zealand case study of academic staff to illustrate this point.

The book doesn't just say what's wrong, however. It has three chapters looking at what factors create healthy work for women. There's a chapter based on research with one group of New Zealand women workers who reported better than average heath. It explores the reasons why they enjoy their good health. There's a chapter with examples from around the world about what can be done to make workplaces healthier by taking account of women's issues at work. It shows the need for occupational health and safety to be more gender-sensitive. And finally there's a chapter devoted to 'gender mainstreaming' health and safety at government level - so that a whole range of social and economic policies are monitored for their health effects on women. Doing this has lots of potential to improve public health as well as workplace health and safety - for women and for men.

Oh, and by the way, today (April 27th) is Workers' Memorial Day, and tomorrow (April 28th) is the International Labour Organisation's Day of Occupational Health and Safety. If this isn't time to take notice of women's health and safety issues I'd like to know when will be!

Dr. Celia Briar worked as an academic for 20 years and is currently employed by the Department of Labour.

ENDS

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