WOMEN/HEALTH: Globalisation Compounds Occupational Ills

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 25 1999 (IPS) - Occupational health problems have mushroomed among women, due to their insertion in the labour market in adverse conditions worldwide.

Work-related health troubles have also been compounded by the restructuring of the productive apparatus fuelled by the process of globalisation.

In an attempt to raise the visibility of occupational health problems among women, the II International Congress Women, Work and Health drew 740 participants from all continents to Rio de Janeiro Sunday through Wednesday.

Women occupy “pink-collar ghettos” in areas like health, where 95 percent of nurses are women, and the textile industry, in which they account for 70 percent of workers – not to mention domestic labour, which is virtually the exclusive terrain of women, said Margarida Barreto, a professor at the Santa Casa Faculty of Medicine in Sao Paulo.

Work that is performed mainly by women tends to involve “repetitive, monotonous, light tasks lacking in creativity, which require manual dexterity,” said Barreto, an expert in occupational health and one of the organisers of the congress.

As a consequence, injuries caused by repetitive tasks are common among women, accounting in Brazil for 80 to 85 percent of all occupational health problems among women, she added.

The restructuring of the productive apparatus over the past two decades has led to a deterioration in working conditions and labour relations for all, but “has had a particularly sharp influence on women,” said Eleonora Menecucci, with the Federal University of Sao Paulo.

New forms of discrimination have compounded old forms of exclusion with the incorporation of female employees in the attempt to cut costs and lower the prestige of particular jobs, said the researcher.

While employment opportunities open to women have increased, that has largely been a consequence of the growth of low-paid, unstable jobs, involving temporary contracts, part-time work, self- employment and home-based work, said Menecucci.

“Fear of unemployment” has increased, and as women are the first to be laid off, they work hard at concealing their job- related ailments until the problems become unbearable or are revealed by the decline in their work performance, Barreto pointed out.

In fact, occupational health problems are a hidden grounds for dismissal, said the physician. That was one of the conclusions of a study involving 2,850 workers, mainly women, who were laid off by the chemical industry in Sao Paulo.

The study, in which Barreto participated, found that 85 percent of the women suffered injuries associated with repetitive movements and other job-related ailments like hernias caused by physical effort, hearing loss and occupational asthma, hormonal alterations affecting the menstrual cycle, alcoholism and depression.

Studies have also pointed to occupational factors, such as exposure to toxic agrochemicals or hormones in the pharmaceutical industry, that increase the risk of breast cancer, said Barreto.

More recent phenomena, first recognised in industrial countries, are “karoshi” – the Japanese name for sudden death at work – and burn-out.

Occupational health is a well-known area in which much research has been carried out – but not from a gender perspective, Barreto underlined.

In an attempt to link these three aspects, the I International Congress on Women, Work and Health was held in 1996 in Barcelona, Spain, on the initiative of the Centre for Health Analyses and Programmes (CAPS), based in that city.

The first such gathering gave rise to an international movement and network of governmental and non-governmental institutions, research centres, universities and personalities interested in sharing information and drawing attention to the issue of women’s occupational health.

This week’s congress in Rio de Janeiro further broadened the movement, by inviting trade union confederations and other social organisations concerned with labour issues.

The aim is to expand the discussion and “raise the sensibility of new sectors,” in order to incorporate a gender perspective into studies on and treatment of occupational health, said Barreto.