41 - Women's Occupational Health: International Perspectives

Abstract

This chapter describes the international perspective of sociopolitical patterns of women's employment. The employment patterns of women workers in female job ghettos and women's comparative lack of power and representation have led to a consistent pattern of neglect of research and regulation of the occupational health and safety problems associated with female-dominated jobs. Perhaps even more ominously for women's health, the marginalization of women as workers has fostered the unwarranted belief that women's work is safe. Social attitudes impinge on women's work lives in other ways as well. Disease and injury, for example, have significantly greater effects on women's ability to earn a living than on men's. In India, women with leprosy are thrown out of their homes far more often than men and have much greater difficulty finding work. They earn only 5% of what men with leprosy earn. In the United States, as another example, a study of disfiguring disability and reemployment found women far less likely to be rehired at their same or equivalent jobs than men who suffered the same occupational injuries. In addition, women workers tend to have less on-the-job experience, because they are often more recently hired or hold only part-time jobs. They are mentored less frequently than men. It also is younger and/or inexperienced workers who suffer the greatest accident rates. Women bear greater social stresses with less support; fewer women than men are covered by health benefits, pension plans, and trade union agreements.