The Gender Sensitive Analysis of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses of Employees

Abstract

The statistics of occupational injuries and illnesses is one of the most important indicators of worker's safety and health in the field of occupational safety and health. The conventional statistics was produced without consideration of gender difference. This study was planned to investigate the difference of occupational injuries and illnesses by gender because that recently female workers was increased through the change of industrial structure such as from manufacturing dominated to service dominated structure. Statistics of occupational injuries and illnesses collected by workmen's compensation insurance system that have no information about gender composition of population. Economically active population survey was used to calculated the rate of occupational injuries and illnesses by gender. The distribution of estimated rate of occupational injuries and illnesses by industry, occupation and the type of accident were different between male and female employees, but those by the size of enterprise, age of the injured, the duration of the first recuperation, and job tenure were similar between male and female employees. This study has shown that gender sensitive approach may be applied to policy of occupational safety and health because that gender neutral perspective may not discover the fact of gender specific problems.