Women in the workplace face high risks from work stress, musculoskeletal injuries, violence and other hazards, according to an official US report that could alert employers here to hazards faced by women in an increasingly female Irish workplace.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says that, in many respects, the risks faced by women at work are higher than for their male counterparts.

Women currently make up almost half the US workforce and in Ireland, they are catching up fast. In the first quarter of this year, women accounted for more than 40 per cent of the Irish workforce. The total in employment was 1,650,000, of whom 670,800 (40.6 per cent) were women and 979,800 men.

In 1997, there were only 539,700 women in employment here, representing 39.1 per cent of the total workforce of 1,379,900, with 840,300 men in employment.

In April 1994, 1,220,600 people were employed, of whom 454,300 (37.2 per cent) were women. In 1988, the total at work was 1,110,700 of whom 366,900, or only 33 per cent, were women. In the US healthcare industry, 80 per cent of the workforce is female. Irish figures for the health and social work category for the first quarter this year was 125,900 employed, of whom 100,000 or 79.4 per cent, were women.

Hazards in this sector include latex allergy and back and needlestick injuries.

Ms Linda Rosenstock, director of the institute, says many factors heighten risks of work-related injury, illness and death for female workers. Increasingly in the US, women are moving into occupations once held exclusively by men, such as the construction industry.

According to the institute, women workers have a disproportionately higher risk of musculoskeletal injury. Women suffer 63 per cent of all work-related repetitive strain injuries. The institute research found:

gender specific work stress factors like sex discrimination and balancing work and family demands may have an effect on women workers above and beyond the impact of general job stressors such as job overload or skill under-utilisation;

discriminatory barriers to financial and career advancement have been linked to more frequent physical and psychological symptoms and more visits to the doctor;

the most effective way of reducing work stress is through organisational change in the workplace.

"Workplaces that actively discourage sexual discrimination and promote family-friendly policies appear to foster worker loyalty and attachment regardless of gender, studies indicate," says the institute. Only 7,800 or 4.9 per cent of the 159,700 employed in the construction sector in Ireland in the first quarter of 2000 were women.

Of women in the US construction industry, the institute found:

women may receive less on-the-job safety monitoring than men from supervisors and co-workers;

patterns of work-related construction fatalities differ for men and women. For instance, women construction labourers are at higher risk than male labourers of death from motor vehicle injuries but less likely to be at risk of death from falls, machinery related injuries or being struck by objects.

Institute researchers' findings are described in the spring 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Women's Association.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health website: www.cdc.gov/niosh

Joe Armstrong can be contacted at jmarms@irish-times.ie