Gender, Work, and Health

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Women and men occupy different positions in the labor market and, in turn, have different work-related exposures and subsequent health effects. There is growing recognition that occupational studies need new methods to account for these differences in order to improve the workplace (Kilbom et al., 1998; Messing, 1998; Doyal, 2003; Messing et al., 2003; Johnson et al., 2009; Eng et al., 2011; Springer et al., 2012; Lewis and Mathiassen, 2013; Locke et al., 2014). Women and men can have different experiences of work exposures and health due to their sex, referring to biological differences, or to their gender, referring to socially constructed differences. Many occupational studies continue to ignore sex and gender considerations or use single sex samples and assume that findings can be generalized to both men and women (Hohenadel et al., 2015). While some researchers present results separately for men and women, which is a starting point, newer more comprehensive methods for modeling and data analyses are needed to advance the field.