The gender workplace health gap in Europe

Summary:

Generally speaking, women's issues are absent from health and safety policies: the hazards involved are either unknown or underestimated; and priorities are defined in male-dominated sectors and occupations, and so on. This failure to take account of women's health issues in the workplace constitutes a barrier to effective policies on occupational health and equal opportunities.

For several years now, the ETUI Health and Safety department and the ETUC have been trying to incorporate gender into their workplace health and safety policy. In 2001, the ETUI Health and Safety department and ETUC decided to carry out a survey in the 15 EU countries aiming at assessing the situation in two areas:

• The inclusion of gender issues in health and safety policies. The aim was to ascertain the extent to which issues to do with women's health are taken into account when defining priorities, research activities and statistical data, and also the extent to which they are taken on board by the respective players and institutions.
• Practical experiences involving health and safety actions at the workplace that take account of gender issues.

This book reviews the key issues addressed by the research (developments, policies and prospects) and case studies from different EU countries illustrating research action in various sectors on different categories of risks.

Table of Contents:

• Part I - The TUTB survey on the gender dimension in health and safety
  • Chapter 1 - The main outcomes of the TUTB survey
• Part II - The state of knowledge
  • Chapter 2 - Gender and the social construction of knowledge in occupational health
  • Chapter 3 - The statistics and main indicators available
  • Chapter 4 - The role of research
  • Chapter 5 - Lay knowledge challenging lofty science: trade union surveys
• Part III - The policy situation
  • Chapter 6 - Occupational health policies: from protection and exclusion to gender neutrality
  • Chapter 7 - Community legislation concerning the working environment
  • Chapter 8 - Recognition of occupational diseases: a lottery where women are always the losers?
  • Chapter 9 - Regulation of the market: a few hypotheses about the gender dimension
  • Chapter 10 - Public health policies
  • Chapter 11 - Community policies on equal opportunities
  • Conclusions
• Case studies
  • Case study 1 - Germany: Female-dominated jobs exposed to hazardous substances | Marianne De Troyer
  • Case study 2 - Germany: Women, health and work – Main findings of the first federal report on women’s health | Antje Ducki & Ulrike Maschewsky-Schneider
  • Case study 3 - Belgium: Working conditions of female check-out staff | Lorenzo Munar Suard
  • Case study 4 - Belgium: Flexiworking and mental distress: women’s unshared burden | Jacqueline Martin
  • Case study 5 - Denmark: Women up front - Female painters in the male dominated construction industry | Elsebet Frydendal Pedersen
  • Case study 6 - France: Prevention of work-related wear and tear in ageing hospital staff | Philippe Davezies
  • Case study 7 - Spain: Achieving the work-life balance | Lorenzo Munar Suard
  • Case study 8 - Finland: The worklife of Finnish women | Lorenzo Munar Suard
  • Case study 9 - Netherlands: Work intensity: a new agenda for trade union action. Selected trade union initiatives in the service sector | Marianne De Troyer

• Primary Source

• Alternative Source