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government report - published on women

The Federal Ministry of Labour has presented on 18/12/2009 the report on the state of occupational safety and health at work and accidents and occupational diseases for the year 2008. Focus this year is the safety and health of women.

summary it can be said: It is rewarding that a gender theme was chosen as a priority. It made a number of data and tables. A content assessment and classification will however not take place. This keeps many questions of the backgrounds and contexts open - not least remains unclear chosen and why the focus was and what conclusions to draw for the political action are.

The information is presented in six chapters divided into:

first Education and career choices

Important results here:

• Younger women now have higher qualifications than men and they also provide the larger number of Hochschulabsolvierenden.
• The employee's share is much higher in women than in men - two thirds of working women are employees.
• The labor market is still heavily segregated, that is here: there are professions that are almost exclusively be done by women, women predominantly work in certain occupations and industries.
  

second Working

Important results here:

• women work much more part time than men, especially when children under 18 live in the household. For men, the reverse is true: if children in the household, they tend to work longer.
• as the reason for part-time work for women especially "family or personal obligations" specified - with the men ranked "other reasons" with 40% above. What are the reasons that be like?

third Working conditions

Here are results of the BIBB / BAuA-employment survey 2005/2006 lecture, some of which are presented here for convenience:

Beermann, Beate / Brenscheidt, Frank / Siefer, Anke (2007): "Differences in working conditions and loads of women and men". In: Badura, Bernhard / Schröder, Helmut Vetter, Christian (ed.): work, gender and health. Gender issues in occupational health management. Heidelberg: Springer (= absenteeism report, 2007), p. 69-82.

In the introduction, reference is made to the connection between working conditions and career choices. The following tables are broken down by:

• sex
• Part Time / Full Time
• share of workers who say affected, to his / share of workers who feel burdened because of the particular factor.

Here are many interesting results, which raise important questions for the causes and possibilities for change, for example:

• incriminating factors in most areas of Part-time workers less than called for full-time staff. Exceptions: "recurring operations. The question remains as to whether the charges actually occur less frequently or only be perceived by employees is less clear. Information on whether the respondents feel burdened subjective, in contrast, relatively mixed - the reasons for this are unclear.
  
• part-time workers often lack resources such as support and maneuver. They feel the lack of resources but less charged than full-time employees.

The health complaints fall on the following results:

• women tend to report more frequently about health problems at work, men report more often than just hip and knee pain, coughing, hearing loss and tinnitus.
• part-time workers generally have fewer reported health problems at work.
• men are receiving medical or therapeutic treatment, especially for back pain, cross, neck and shoulder and hip, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach and digestive complaints.
• falls in the women at first is that part-time working women more frequently in almost all cases are being treated as full-time working women. This is mainly to lower back pain, the back, neck and shoulders, chest pain, shortness of breath and dizziness and depression.

4th Differences in earnings and guidance

for significant earnings differences between women and men (it is on the numbers directed by the Federal Statistical Office 2009), three reasons are given:

• The segregation of the labor market,
• the larger share of the female part-time employees and family
• interruptions of employment.

The pay gap between men and women are broken down by economic activity and age. In addition, the proportion of women in occupations with particularly high and particularly low Durschnittsverdiensten is presented and the proportion of women in management levels, broken down by company size.

5th Accidents and
6th Occupational diseases

The accidents and occupational diseases, the proportion of women is much lower than that of men. It would be interesting to clarify to what extent the lower proportion of women is related to the labor market segregation. Women work in occupations that are less dangerous? Practice women are less dangerous activities? Or women behave less risky? Unfortunately, the numbers give out any information.

complemented the presentation by a few references that do not fail, however, very comprehensive.

The report of the federal government can here to download. A paper version can here the Federal Gazette publisher to be ordered. The number printed matter is 17/380, the order including shipping costs € 11.60.