The comparison of women's and men's injury experience is shown in the last two columns of table II, which give for each industry the proportion of workers who are women and the proportion of injuries that occur to women. A few industries show an unusually close relationship between the proportion of women and proportion of injuries received by women. In the manufacture of stamped and pressed metal products, women's injuries and women's employment were in almost the same proportion-36 and 37 percent, respectively. In the boot and shoe industry 53 percent of the workers were women, and 50 percent of the injuries were women's. Similar figures for the manufacture of watches, jewelry, etc., were 48 and 44 percent; and for synthetic textile fibers, in which women had a higher injury frequency rate than men, the percentages of women's employment and women's injuries were 37 and 40, respectively.

On the other hand, women experienced a disproportionately low percentage of the injuries in the tire and tube industry; comprising more than one-fourth of the workers they received less than one-tenth of the injuries. Similarly, in the manufacture of general industrial machinery women were reported to be about 20 percent of the workers and to have received less than 9 percent of the injuries; in paper and pulp, 19 percent of the workers, receiving 7 percent of the injuries; and in paints, varnishes, and colors, 23 percent of the workers, with 6 percent of the injuries in the industry.

The similarities and differences between the injury experience of men and women indicated above point up sharply the desirability of obtaining information on the occupations of the workers, by sex, in reporting firms. It would then be possible to determine the way in which the injury rates are related to the specific occupations of men and women.

The injury experience of women not only differed from that of men in the same industries; it varied among the women themselves from industry to industry. A comparison of the employment of women in the major industry groups with the occurrence of injuries to women in those groups shows a few outstanding differences between the proportion of all women employed by an industry and the proportion of all injuries sustained by those women. Women in iron and steel were 14 percent of all the women workers reported, but they suffered 21 percent of all the injuries to women. The food industries, with slightly less than 4 percent of all the women, reported 7 percent of all their injuries. Slaughtering and meat packing, as might be expected, accounted for well over half of the injuries to women in the food industries. The apparel industry, on the other hand, showed 5 percent of all the women's injuries among the women in this group, who were somewhat more than 9 percent of all women; and the women in the electrical equipment industries, 13 percent of the total, experienced only 8 percent of the injuries to women.

INJURY FREQUENCY RATES

The injury frequency rates, defined as the number of injuries. received per million employee-hours worked, are shown in table II for the reporting firms in each of 63 industries. Each rate given is based on over one million hours of exposure. The following paragraphs give the range of injury frequency rates derived for women

and a comparison with men's rates. They indicate the industries in which injury frequency was approximately the same for the two sexes, and those in which men's rate of injury was considerably higher

than women's.

The injury frequency rates for women range from 2.0 in the manufacture of various ordnance materials (sighting and fire-control equipment, small arms, and ordnance and accessories not elsewhere classified) to 25.9 in slaughtering and meat packing and 26.0 in lumber mills (sawmills, planing mills, plywood mills, and veneer mills). Roughly these frequency rates correspond to the numbers of women injured for every 500 women employed throughout a year. Over half (36) of the frequency rates were under 10. Only 4 were over 20: in addition to the two mentioned above, a frequency rate of 21.5 was found in the manufacture of stamped and pressed metal products, and 22.8 in the manufacture of wooden furniture.

Among the men, on the other hand, only 6 frequency rates under 10 occurred; and 27 were over 20. Maximum rates of 41.5 and 39.0 were found in canning and preserving and in slaughtering and meat packing, respectively. Forgings and foundries showed a rate of 36.8 and lumber mills a rate of 35.5. The minimum frequency rates for men are found in the following industries:

It is obvious that the injury experience of men is more serious throughout the manufacturing industries than that of women. In only one industry, the manufacture of synthetic textile fibers, was the rate for women higher than that for men: 15.1 as compared with 12.8. In four other industries, the injury rates for women and men are closely comparable. They are:

Of the 10 industries with the highest injury frequency rates for women, 6 were also among the 10 highest for men. These 6 are slaughtering and meat packing, wood furniture, wooden containers, forgings and foundries, leather and leather products other than boots and shoes, and lumber. For the rest, there is great diversity in the relative positions of the various industries on the frequency-rate scale for men and for women. Such diversity is at least in part reflection of the differences in exposure to hazards due to the differences in occupation or working environment of men and women.

INJURIES TO PRODUCTION AND NONPRODUCTION WORKERS

As already noted, most of the workers, both men and women, were in production jobs. As would be expected injuries were more common among production workers than nonproduction workers. Of the total of 2,843,588 workers, 2,331,199 or 82 percent were in produc