tion. Of the 836,753 women, the percentage of production workers was 76; and 1,691,201, or 84 percent of the 2,006,835 men workers, were on production jobs. In most of the industries, over 95 percent of the injuries, among both men and women, occurred to production workers.

A number of industries report between 85 and 100 percent of their injuries to women occurring in production, although much smaller proportions of the women in these industries are production workers. In the motor vehicle industry, for example, 61 percent of the women are in nonproduction occupations; but all of the injuries reported were in production. Forgings and foundries report 41 percent of the women workers, and 4 percent of the injuries to women, in nonproduction. General industrial machinery, special industrial machinery, and construction and mining machinery all show comparable figures indicating a much higher than average rate of injuries in production as compared with nonproduction; their figures are 55, 56, and 48 percent of the women in production, respectively, with 93, 100, and 88 percent of the injuries, respectively, occurring in this category.

The textile and apparel industries, on the other hand, showed the proportions of workers and injuries in production to be somewhat more nearly alike than the average. For the former, 99 percent of the injuries to women and 93 percent of the women workers were reported in production. The apparel industry reported the only instance in which the ratio of production to nonproduction workers was slightly higher than the ratio of production to nonproduction injuries: 92 percent of the women workers, who were in production, received 90 percent of the injuries to women.

Whether such deviations from the average distribution of injuries among production and nonproduction workers are characteristic of the industries cannot be determined by a comparison of data for production and nonproduction workers, as in several instances the number of workers involved in each group is too small for statistical analysis.

KINDS OF DISABILITY

For both men and women over 95 percent of the injuries resulted in temporary disabilities. Among the 4,072 injuries to women, 6 were fatalities, 0.2 percent of all women's injuries. There were also 184 permanent disabilities, 4.5 percent of all women's injuries. Comparable figures for men are 85 fatalities and 884 permanent disabilities, which are 0.4 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively, of the total number of injuries.

Of the 6 fatalities to women, 2 occurred in the apparel industry, 2 in iron and steel industries, and 1 each in the electrical equipment and textile groups. The manufacture of stamped and pressed metal products, with the high injury frequency of 21.5 for women, had 1 of the 2 iron and steel fatalities; the other occurred in the making of basic iron and steel, where the frequency rate for women, 6.9, was relatively low. The fatality in the electrical industry occurred in the manufacture of radios and phonographs, and that in textiles in the knit goods industry.

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TABLE III.-Fatal and Permanently Disabling Injuries to Women in 9,154 Manufacturing Establishments, Classified by Industry, for One Quarter of 1945

Only industries for which fatal or permanently disabling injuries were reported are shown here.

Table III gives the distribution by industry of the fatal and permanently disabling injuries to women. Although for the entire group these more serious injuries constitute less than 5 percent of all injuries, their frequency varies considerably from one industry to another. High on the list is the manufacture of ammunition, with 14 permanent disabilities out of 47 injuries, or nearly 30 percent. Stamped and pressed metal products also showed a high percentage of serious injuries, 16 percent of the total 203 injuries being fatal or permanently disabling. Other industries showing more than 10 percent of women's injuries as fatalities or permanent disabilities are:

11

11

13

13

Metal coating, engraving, and vitreous enamel products-
Iron and steel, "other".

Agricultural machinery, tractors_.

Watches, clocks, jewelry, and silverware.

All of the 6 fatalities and all but 3 of the 184 permanent disabilities occurred among production workers. The 3 permanent injuries to nonproduction workers were found in the manufacture of agricultural machines and tractors, structural clay products (in "other" stone, clay, and glass), and wooden containers.

NONMANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

Records of industrial injuries by sex of worker have been obtained for the entire year 1945 from 10,665 establishments in nonmanufacturing industries. Of these, 3,019 were in wholesale trade, 6,145 in retail trade, and 1,501 in other nonmanufacturing industries. They employed about 445,000 workers, of whom 52 percent were in retail trade, 20 percent in wholesale trade, and 28 percent in other nonmanufacturing industries. Table IV gives details of the distribution of workers in the 29 industry classifications listed. It also indicates, in showing the number of reporting plants for each industry, that on the average the firms are small. Mail order houses and electric light and power companies are the largest, with average numbers of about 700 and 500 persons per firm, respectively.

As in the case of the manufacturing industries, the data here presented for nonmanufacturing cover only the responding firms, and cannot be taken as necessarily representative of nonmanufacturing industries throughout the country.

EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN

In the nonmanufacturing firms covered by this survey, women number 195,172 and constitute 44 percent of all employees reported-a considerably larger proportion than is found in the manufacturing industries. In retail trade about half of the workers are women. The wholesale trade firms, on the other hand, report that only 28 percent of their workers are women. (For individual industries see table IV.)

Women predominate in variety and limited-price stores and in mail-order houses, where they are over 80 percent of the workers. Other retail trade industries in which women comprise more than half the workers are apparel, department and general merchandise, and drug stores. Approximately two-thirds of the workers in cleaning and dyeing and in laundries, and slightly over half those in hotels, are women. In the various wholesales trades, women are from onefifth to two-fifths of the employees.

The following sections will discuss the number of injuries to women, the injury frequency rates, and the types of disability suffered.

NUMBER OF INJURIES

During 1945 the number of injuries reported by the nonmanufacturing firms covered in this survey was 12,095, of which 2,621 occurred to women and 9,474 to men. Thus women, constituting 44 percent of all workers reported, received only 22 percent of all the injuries. In retail trade, they were 49 percent of the workers and had 23 percent of the injuries; in wholesale trade, comprising 28 percent of the workers, they suffered only 9 percent of the injuries. The difference is least in the other nonmanufacturing industries, where women, 45 percent of the workers, received 30 percent of the injuries.

In proportion to the number of women employed, the records for injuries to women were highest in drug and chain food stores among the retail trades, and in hotels among the other industries. Women working in drug stores comprised only 6 percent of all the women in

retail trade, but received 17 percent of the injuries in this group; in chain food stores, the figures are respectively 4 and 15 percent. In contrast, the apparel shops employed one-fifth of all the women in retail trade, but experienced less than one-tenth of the injuries to women in retail trade. Hotels employed 52 percent of all women in nonmanufacturing industries, other than trade, which are covered by this report, and they received 72 percent of all the injuries to women in this group. For a comparison between injuries to men and those to women, the last two columns of table IV give for each industry the percentage of workers who are women and the percentage of injuries that occur to women.

INJURY FREQUENCY RATES

Most of the women employed in nonmanufacturing industries are engaged in sales or clerical and other office work. The relatively nonhazardous nature of such work, as compared for instance with certain manufacturing processes, is reflected in the low injury frequency rates for women in most of the nonmanufacturing industries (table IV). Twenty-three of the twenty-nine industries show injury frequency rates of less than 10 for women, and of the 23, 17 show rates of less than 5.

The records show marked differences in injury frequency rates in certain of the retail trades. The rate for women in chain food stores, 22.5, is considerably higher than their rate in independent food stores, 13.7. This difference, to a somewhat smaller degree, is shown also for men in these two industries. Variety and limited price stores also have a relatively high rate for women. Drug stores, with a rate of 17.8 for women and 12.3 for men, report the only instance in this of a higher injury rate for women than for men.

group

The variation in injury rates throughout the retail trades probably indicates a wide range of conditions of work, for both women and men. For the former, drug stores, variety stores, and food storesespecially chain stores-offer the greatest risks. For the latter, fuel and ice dealers, variety stores, and dairy products firms show the highest rates. The wide differences between men's and women's rates in the fuel and ice industry and in dairy products probably reflect the fact that men are employed on delivery and other types of relatively hazardous work which women do not do.

Wholesale trades show a somewhat lower range of injury rates for women than do the retail trades; the average for the wholesale trades of 5.1 compares with 6.5 for the retail trades. The handling of farm products and supplies produced the top rate for women in this group, 11.4, which nevertheless was less than half that for men in the same industry.

In the industries outside of trade, banking and brokerage show a slightly higher injury rate for women than for men, 2.0 as compared with 1.7, though the difference is probably not of significance. Here the occupations of the two sexes are comparable, as far as exposure to hazards is concerned. If anything, the more extensive employment of women than men on bookkeeping, addressograph, and other types of office machinery might expose women to a greater extent to certain