2023-06-28 14:18:46
When we talk about occupations that are dangerous to health, we quite spontaneously think of construction professions or certain jobs in heavy industries. Professions, still today, exercised mainly by men. To the point that the health of women at work remains an unthought of public policy, warns the delegation for women’s rights of the Senate, which formulates in a report delivered this Wednesday a series of recommendations to remove this blind spot.
As the document, the result of “more than six months of hearings and trips to the field”, points out, “gendered statistics remain fragmented” in the field of epidemiology and public health policies. Sick leave, monitoring by prevention and occupational health services, epidemiological research on predominantly female sectors, etc. The president of the women’s rights delegation, Annick Billon (Centrist Union), and the four co-rapporteurs, from the right as well as the left, regret a glaring lack of data and call for an end to it.
More invisible occupational risks
As a result, the report points out, public policies for the prevention and compensation of occupational risks were first designed for men. “Workstations and equipment – including personal protective equipment (PPE) – are based on the anthropometric references of an ‘average man'”, he notes for example. The senators therefore call for “adapting preventive measures to the working conditions of women”.
However, women face particular problems. “Only 20% of trades are mixed”, recalls the report, and “women are more exposed to so-called finer tasks but which, by their repetition, their rhythm or the professional constraints in which they are carried out, can be very tiring “. Occupational risks “mostly invisible and silent”, where “men are more visible and involve their vital prognosis (accidents, asbestos…)”.
The report thus highlights the care and cleaning professions, where four out of five workers are women workers. However, these care professions are marked by the repetitive carrying of heavy loads exceeding the standard of 25 kg, atypical hours or “strong emotional and organizational demands”. With various consequences for health. Night work increases the risk of breast cancer by a quarter. Cleaning professionals are exposed, via cleaning products, to seven carcinogens on average.
The report therefore pleads for “facilitating the recognition of breast and ovarian cancers as occupational diseases” and a revision of the list of hardship criteria. It also advocates the establishment of a national strategy, with an “integrated approach to women’s health”. The obligation for employers to put in place a single gendered occupational risk assessment document must also be applied, with “dissuasive financial penalties”. “To differentiate is not to discriminate”, hammered the senators during the presentation of the report.
Endometriosis, menopause, pregnancy… Situations still poorly managed
Specific female conditions are also not taken into account in public occupational health policies, even though they have direct consequences on the professional life of women. The senators are also calling for reflection on the adaptation of working conditions to the symptoms of menopause, which concern 14 million women.
The report also cites endometriosis – 10% of women of childbearing age are affected by this chronic pain, i.e. 1.5 to 2.5 million people – which should, according to the authors, be recognized as a long-term condition. exonerating. On the other hand, Laurence Rossignol (PS), co-rapporteur, specified that the introduction of menstrual leave did not achieve consensus within the delegation, and the report therefore does not conclude on this point.
Reproductive health also remains a concern, the report points out. One in five working or service-employed women loses or quits their job during pregnancy, and many of them face discrimination. This leads to a non-use of certain rights, against which it would be advisable to fight thanks to better information of the women concerned, considers the delegation for women’s rights of the Senate.
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