Is there a gender bias in workers’ compensation and OH&S?

Women represent about 47% of the employed labour force in United States and Australia, 48% of the employed labour force in Canada.   One might expect the hazards in the workplace to be similar for men and women and that is true for some risks.  Women working in construction doing the same work as men likely face similar risk of injury from falling objects, falls from elevations, lacerations, as well as pinch and “caught-in” injuries.   Many women working in construction are involved as flaggers where transportation/struck-by injuries more common. Women and men working as flaggers face the same hazards from drivers ignoring "cone zone" rules.

Even if women and men face identical hazards, the risk and rate of injury may differ. Variations in exposure, task selection/role assignment and even hours of work can influence published injury rates. 

There are, of course, other variations that change the risk and injury rate profiles for both men and women.  Equitable work for men and women often means different approaches that address the realities of difference between them and the context in which they work.  One OSHA paper [Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH). 1999. Women in the Construction Workplace: Providing Equitable Safety and Health Protection. U.S. Department of Labor. Available at: https://www.osha.gov/doc/accsh/haswicformal.html ] noted differences and health impacts of:

• Workplace culture
• Sanitary facilities
• Personal protective equipment and clothing
• Ergonomics
• Reproductive hazards
• Health and safety training

The differential impact of these issues on the health and safety of women and men may not be fully realized or acted upon.  Inspectors may only note the presence or absences of PPE and not the appropriateness of the range of sizes and fit available for workers.  The standard of sanitary facilities may not be high on the priority list for workplace safety and health officers but, as the study points out, the quality of what’s provided can have greater impact on women’s health.  In the era of “#metoo”, there may be greater awareness of sexual harassment on the worksite, but how many worksite inspections actually address workplace culture, training and enforcement?

These are not trivial issues.  These issues result in real harm to women, harm that may not always meet the traditional threshold for a workplace injury claim.  Psychological injury, bladder infections, ergonomic injuries are often the subject of greater adjudication scrutiny and contribute to a disproportionately high rate of denied workers’ compensation claims made by women.   The common experience of women having claims denied leads to a reluctance to even report harm let alone file claims.  This compounds the harm, perpetuates the problem, and hides the magnitude of gender bias in both prevention and workers’ compensation. 

Although the labour force is almost evenly split between males and females, the pattern of work is not exactly the same.  Women tend to be over-represented in work outside the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday work paradigm—and when most regulatory inspections and access to services take place.  Despite women experiencing a disproportionately high number of injuries on weekends and statutory holidays, there is little evidence that prevention inspections and services are equally available and allocated accordingly.

Inspectorates and prevention agencies need to assess their allocation of resources in just in ways that expose gender bias.  Metrics that show an equitable allocation of resources, access and activities to sectors dominated by women would be a start.  Anecdotally, the expectation of women and men expecting to see a workplace health and safety officer on their worksite is vastly different and begs the question, why. Measurement matters.

Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement.   If you can't measure something, you can't understand it. If you can't understand it, you can't control it. If you can't control it, you can't improve it.

- H. James Harrington (Author, columnist, a Fellow of the British Quality Control Organization and the American Society for Quality Control).  

   

Is there a systemic bias in the system?  It would not be the first time this question has been raised nor would it be surprising to find that workers’ compensation and occupational health & safety have similar inherent bias as shown in drug studies, ergonomic tables and other medical research. 

Some might argue that the risk, as evidenced by injury and claim rates, is higher for men.  The roughly 60/40 split in male/female time-loss injuries should support a similar distribution in prevention resources and efforts; fair argument, but I have seen no agency that reports efforts or activities on this metric.  Nor have I seen any reports of workplace inspectorates being evaluated through a gender lens. 

All workers deserve and receive equal protection through prevention and inspection services.   Saying our current workers’ compensation, prevention, and enforcement systems do that does not necessarily make it so.  It is time to take a hard look at what we are doing and not doing to achieve truly equal OH&S and workers’ compensation protection.

 Sometimes equality means treating people the same, despite their differences, and sometimes it means treating them as equals by accommodating their differences.- Judge Rosalie Abella, Report of the Commission on Equality in Employment, Canada