AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE 43:618–629 (2003) Be the Fairest of Them All: Challenges and Recommendations for the Treatment ofGender in Occupational Health Research Karen Messing, PhD, 1Ã Laura Punnett, ScD, 2 Meg Bond, PhD, 3 Kristina Alexanderson , PhD, 4 Jean Pyle, PhD, 5 Shelia Zahm, ScD, 6 David Wegman, MD, 2 Susan R. Stock, MD, MSc, 7 and Sylvie de Grosbois, PhD 1 Background Both women’s and men’s occupational health problems merit scientific attention. Researchers need to consider the effect of gender on how occupational health issues are experienced, expressed, defined, and addressed. More serious consideration ofgender-related factors will help identify risk factors for both women and men. Methods The authors, who come from a number of disciplines (ergonomics, epidemiol- ogy , publi c healt h, socia l medi cine, community p sych ology , econo mics , socio logy ) poole dtheir critiques in order to arrive at the most common and significant problems faced by occupational health researchers who wish to consider gender appropriately. Results This paper describes some ways that gender can be and has been handled in studies of occupational health, as well as some of the consequences. The paper also sugge sts speci fic re sear ch prac tices that avoid err ors. Obst acle s to gende r-se nsiti ve practices are considered. Conclusions Although gender-sensitive practices may be difficult to operationalize in some cas es, they enric h the sci entific qua lit y of researc h and should lead to bet terdata andultimately to well-tar geted prevention progr ams. Am. J. Ind. Med. 43:618–629, 2003. ß 2003 Wi ley-Liss, Inc. KEY WORDS: gender ; sex; women; men; res ear ch meth odo logy; epi demiology; ergonomics; confounding; effect modification; gender-based analysis INTRODUCTION Bot h women’ s and men ’s occ upa tional hea lth merit scientific attention. In the United States, women constitute 46% of the paid workforce [United States Department ofLabor, 2002], and have one third of compensated occupa- tional health and safety problems, resulting in 81% of claims on a per hour basis [McDiarmid and Gucer, 2001]. These injurie s entai l di rect and indirect costs to workers and employers, as well as human suffering [deCarteret, 1994]. Ther efore, appr opr iately inc ludin g sex and gender is inc rea sing ly rele va nt for occ upat ional health research. Although researchers are interested in developing studies involving these variables, they may not know exactly how to do this. This article supplies some suggestions. ß 2003 Wiley-Liss,Inc. 1 Departmen t of Biological Sciences,CINBIO SE,Universite ¤ duQue ¤ beca ' Montre ¤ al,Montre ¤ al, Que ¤ bec,Canada 2 Departmen t of Work Environm ent and Kerr Ergonomics Institut e, University of Massa- chusetts Lowell , Lowel l, Massachusett s 3 Departmen t of Psycholog y, Center for Women a nd Work, University of Massachusett s Lowell,Lowell, Massachuse tts 4 Divi sionof SocialMedicin e andPublicHealth,Depart men t of Healt h andSociety , Facu lty of Health Sciences,Linko « ping Universi ty,Linko « ping, Sweden 5 Departmen t of Regional Economic and Social Development and Center for Women and Work , Universit y of MassachusettsLowell, Lowe ll, Massachusett s 6 Division of Cancer Epidemiolog y a nd Genetics, National Cancer Institute , Rockville, Maryland 7 Montr eal Departmen t of Public Health and McGill Universi ty,Montreal, Quebec,Canada Contract grant sponsor: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Senior Investigator Award to Karen Messing ); Contract grantnumber: 765-2000-0038 . *Corresp ondenceto: KarenMessing, Directo r, CINBIOSE,Universite ¤ duQue ¤ beca ' Montre ¤ al, CP8888Succ.Centre-vile,Montre ¤ al Q ue.H3C 3P8 , Canada . E-mail: messing. karen @uqam.ca Accepted11February 2003 DOI10 .1 002/ ajim.1 0225.Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com)
