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INDUSTRIAL INJURIES TO WOMEN

INTRODUCTION

The development of adequate safety programs in industry and the control of accidents to workers require a firm basis of factual information. Extensive reports on the occurrence of industrial injuries have provided much of this information on which to build such programs. Injury frequency rates in various industries have been determined on the basis of a large body of data concerning the numbers of injuries and the extent to which workers are exposed to hazards. Systematic reporting of injuries has permitted the study of trends and fluctuations in industrial injury experience.

Relatively little statistical information has been available, however, on injuries to women workers, although a few studies have been made in recent years which report separately industrial injuries occurring to women and to men. Two reports on the subject were published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics during 1945. A summary of relevant findings in various studies is presented in Dr. Baetjer's book, Women in Industry, published in 1946.2 Workmen's Compensation reports in 18 States give some information on reported or compensated claims by sex. Generally such reports give only the number of claims, although in a few States more detailed figures for men and women separately are given by industry, age of worker, type and cause of injury, or other factors.

The present study has been undertaken to discover the extent of injury to women in various industries and to obtain comparison, on as broad a basis as possible, of the experience of men and women. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly collects and publishes injury information from a representative group of manufacturing firms, although such data are not secured for men and women separately. At the request of the Women's Bureau and the Industrial Division of the Children's Bureau (now Child Labor and Youth Employment Branch of the Division of Labor Standards) the Bureau of Labor Statistics asked the group of manufacturing firms which periodically give information on injuries to report this information by sex and age (minors and adults) for one quarter of the year 1945. Soon afterward information on injuries by sex and age was also asked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from a group of nonmanufacturing firms for the year 1945 as a whole.

1U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industrial Injuries to Women Workers, by Max D. Kossoris. Monthly Labor Review 60: 311-315, February 1945. Work Injuries to Women in Shipyards, by Max D. Kossoris. Monthly Labor Review 60: 551-560, March 1945.

2 Baetjer, Anna M. Women in Industry, Their Health and Efficiency. W. B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, Pa., 1946. Chs. 8 and 9.

In the iron and steel, electrical equipment, and machinery (except electrical) industry groups, some firms gave information for one quarter and some for another. For purposes of this study the records of the two quarters were combined for each of these industries.

Each reporting firm was asked to give information for the period covered on the number and type of injuries to men and to women, and to adults and minors. Manufacturing firms were asked also for separate reports on production and nonproduction workers.

This report presents first a summary of the quarterly reports from the manufacturing firms and second a summary of the annual reports of the nonmanufacturing firms. Injuries to adults and minors are being analyzed by the Child Labor and Youth Employment Branch of the Division of Labor Standards.

The report is based on the replies from 20,000 establishments which. were willing to give injury data separately for men and women workers. The numbers of reporting firms are, however, only parts of the total samples of establishments included in Bureau of Labor Statistics reports and may not necessarily be as representative of the country as the total Bureau of Labor Statistics groups. Differences in frequency rates for all workers in manufacturing industries as reported here and as published in the Bureau of Labor Statistics quarterly reports occur because not all of the firms scheduled responded with data by sex and because some closely related industries have been combined in the following pages.

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN

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Over 9,000 manufacturing establishments reported injuries by sex during one quarter of 1945. Ninety-two percent of those reporting employed women. The total number of workers in all the establishments was 2,843,588, of whom 836,753, or 29 percent, were women. Included in the report are large woman-employing industries, such as textiles, apparel, electrical equipment, leather, and food products, as well as those in which women are a small proportion of the workers— for example, lumber, foundries and the manufacturing of iron and steel products, and heavy machinery. Even in these latter industries, however, women are found in considerable force, despite the fact that they are a small percentage of the workers. More than 116,000 women were employed by the reporting firms in the iron and steel industriesover 26,000 in the manufacture of basic iron and steel and nearly 14,000 in foundries and forgings.

Four major industry groups accounted for over half the women reported: iron and steel, textiles, electrical equipment, and machinery (except electrical). In iron and steel they were predominantly in the manufacture of fabricated metal products and stamped and pressed metal products. Almost 80 percent of the women in textiles were in the manufacture of textiles and cotton yarn, and about 15 percent were in knit goods. The third largest group, women in the electrical equipment industries, were engaged principally in the making of industrial electrical equipment, radios and phonographs, and communication and signaling equipment. Nearly half of the 92,000 women in machine manufacturing were employed on various types of industrial machinery.

Total numbers of workers in the 18 major industry groups represented in the reports are given in table I. Table II presents the employment figures for men and women in 63 industry classifications within these groups.

Employment of both men and women was largely concentrated in production tasks. Of the women employed in these firms, 76.5 percent were production workers. The proportion ranged from over 90 percent in the manufacture of clothing, boots and shoes, textiles and cotton yarns, and pottery to approximately 40 percent in the manufacture of paints and varnishes, motor vehicles, and tanks.

No classification by occupation is available, other than the breakdown between production and nonproduction workers. For this reason, exposure to hazards is not known except in general terms relating to the character of the industry and of the production processes it involves.

The data on injuries presented in the following section are primarily in terms of all men or women in particular industries. For about half of the industries valid injury data could also have been presented separately for production workers, but since these data

Only injuries which result in disability are reported. A disabling injury is one which causes death, permanent impairment, or an inability to work extending beyond the day or shift on which the injury occurred.

were not statistically significant for all the industries or groups of industries considered, major emphasis has been put on the comparison of data regardless of the proportion of production to nonproduction workers.

TABLE 1.-Distribution of Employment by Sex in 9,154 Manufacturing Establishments, Classified by Industry Group, for One Quarter of 1945

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Differences in the proportion of production to nonproduction workers in an industry make important differences in the proportion of workers in each of the various types of occupations; and the degree of hazardousness of the men's versus the women's occupations effects differences in the proportion of injuries to men and the proportion to women. Since, however, the data on injury experience of men and women are not available by occupation, no comparisons of accident experience of men and women on the same job, under similar conditions of work, are possible.

The report does show what has been the injury experience of women in selected manufacturing industries as a whole and how the experience of women in these industries compares with the experience of men. In other words the facts show how hazardous is an industry to women, on their jobs, as compared with its hazardousness to men on theirs, and how great is the danger in one industry for its women workers compared to the danger in other industries for the women they employ.

NUMBER OF INJURIES

The 836,753 women employed in the reporting firms received 4,072 injuries out of the total of 27,063. These figures show that the women, who were 29 percent of the total number of workers, received but 15 percent of the injuries. Approximately 1 woman in 205 was injured during the quarter of the year covered by reports, whereas 1 man in 85 had been injured. The fact that women were thus injured less than men undoubtedly results in large measure from the fact that women are largely on less heavy or hazardous jobs than the men. The number of injuries in each industry classification is shown in table II.

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