Fatal Accidents And Violence While At Work1
In the United States, in 2005, men were 54% of the workforce but 93% of workers who died at work due to fatal accidents or violence (pdf link). (The raw numbers are 5300 men, 402 women).2 For women at work, the most common cause of death was highway accidents, followed by homicide. For men at work, the most common cause of death was also highway accidents, followed by “contact with objects and equipment” and then by falls. Looking at risk ratios, the most likely workers to die of accident or violence at work are agricultural, fishing and lumber workers; in terms of raw numbers, however, construction workers are killed the most often.
There are a little over 200 workplace suicides each year, about 94% of which are men. (Interestingly, although in all other areas of workplace death non-whites — and especially non-white immigrants — are disproportionately likely to be the victims, a disproportionately high number of workplace suicides are committed by white workers.) The most likely occupations for workplace suicide are police, farmer, and soldier.
Death Due To Workplace-Related Disease
Workplace deaths due to accidents and violence tend to get a lot of attention, because they are dramatic and relatively simple to measure. But, in terms of total numbers, they’re a minor problem. Deaths due to workplace-related disease and toxic exposure are a far larger problem, killing over 100,000 Americans a year, according to the International Labor Organization’s estimates (pdf link).
I couldn’t find clear figures comparing female and male deaths due to work-related disease and exposure in the United States. But according to the ILO, in established market economies as a whole, 240,700 men and 46,298 women died in 2002 due to work-related disease; put another way, 84% of workers who die due to work-related disease are male. (These figures are estimates; workplace mortality due to disease is not possible to measure with pinpoint accuracy).
Occupational Segregation
What causes the discrepancy in workplace deaths? The main cause is “occupational segregation” – the tendency for some jobs to be mostly held by men, and others to be mostly held by women. The most hazardous jobs — whether due to exposure to dangerous substances, or to risk of falling or being in a highway accident — are disproportionately held by men. (Contrary to popular belief, people in risky jobs are not usually paid extra to compensate them for danger).
Occupation segregation, in turn, is caused in part by workplace discrimination, both in the form of employers preferring a particular sex, and in the form of on-the-job harassment and discrimination making blue-collar women, or a pink collar men, know that they’re unwelcome.
Occupational segregation is also caused by self-segregation, as many male workers feel uncomfortable applying for female-dominated jobs, and vice versa. There is, in my opinion, a vicious cycle functioning; the lack of pink-collar male, and blue-collar female, role models and mentors makes it less likely that future workers will cross the occupational gender line.
Conclusion
While we should fight occupational segregation, getting rid of occupational segregation won’t solve the tragedy of work-related deaths; more women and less men dying is less sexist, but still not a net improvement in terms of saving lives. What’s needed is more pro-active government intervention to make workplaces safer3 , along with a reform of tort laws to make it easier for workers and their survivors to successfully sue employers. (Edited years later to add: And, of course, we need more unionization of workplaces.)
The problem with a dry term like “occupational segregation” is that, while it’s accurate, it also obscures how disproportionate male deaths in the workplace are caused by sexism. Nearly all of the causes of occupational segregation, in one way or another, are themselves caused in part by sexism. Workplace deaths are a clear example of how sexism harms men in the United States.
- In this blog post, I’m concentrating on workplace deaths. But it’s also the case that men are more likely than women to be injured at work. [↩]
- This number does not include illegal jobs. My impression is that prostitution — a female-dominated job — and drug dealing — a male-dominated job — are both relatively high-mortality jobs. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that including illegal job mortality might reduce the male/female mortality discrepancy a bit, but it certainly wouldn’t eliminate it. [↩]
- There’s no reason that this has to consist solely of micro-management and regulations. For instance, the government could offer tax breaks for companies that can rigorously prove that they’ve reduced workplace accidents and fatalities by a substantial amount. [↩]
I misunderstood what you meant when you said completely. My bad. (no snark intended. I see what you’re saying now.
thats good..i just gave 7 back to back massages and I’m officially brain dead right now *S*
My wife does therapeutic massage. 7 in a row is killer. Good to have the business though.
I was referring to laws that were passed at the intense urgings of Women’s and Feminist Groups during the past 4 decades.
Laws that define rape as the absense of consent with penetration, by definition legally exclude all women from raping a man by having sex with him, no matter how drunk he is.
This law was passed by The Matriarchy. and it hurts men.
Laws that define women as a ‘minority’ and set aside a certain percentage University Admissions and other positions for women when women account for 60% of college enrollees and graduates obviously need to be changed or stricken.
How can a group have a near super majority, and also be a minority?
They were passed by The Matriarchy, and they hurt men.
You all REALLY cannot post without resorting to Logical Fallacy, can’t you?
I was referring the M.D.’s (men and women) who decide to dump their field and go into some other line of work, or surgeons’ (men and women) who don’t want to work the hours to make the intern cut for surgical rotation.
If someone gets an M.D. degree, works as a Physician until age 40, and then drops out of clinical to become something else, who will be your doctor? The number of med school positions has stayed the same at ~16,000 over the past 10 years.. The number admitted is not growing in step with the population.
Yes. Notice the gender neutral language of my post above.
Divorce and Family Law attorneys are among the highest paid attorneys.
I know someone in the middle of his divorce. His wife’s lawyer is charging $800/hr. His is charging $500/hr. These rates are at the top of the legal industry. Estate attorneys I know of charge $200 – $350.
These are Los Angeles prices.
If you don’t like the choices available, work somewhere else. The bosses choices don’t define your context or what you can do – the market is huge. Find someplace where the choices appeal to you.
You can always do whatever you want, you just cannot force others to do what you want. That includes forcing the boss to make the choices less shittier.
She is under no obligation to do so – businesses exist for one purpose only:
To turn a profit.
In real life, this isn’t always a realistic option. Sometimes people don’t have any decent job prospects; sometimes people don’t have the ability to forgo getting paid while still feeding kids or paying rent.
And of course bosses are responsible for creating shitty choices, when they have the option of creating non-shitty choices instead. A boss who says “have sex with me or you’re fired” is morally responsible for creating that shitty choice, to use an extreme example.
Divorce and Family Law attorneys are among the highest paid attorneys.
Lee, a sample size of three lawyers does not support your (incorrect) assumption.
Notice the gender neutral language of my post above.
First time you’ve used any. Huh. As for who will be my doctor, all the other doctors who stayed in the profession. Was that supposed to be a difficult question?
Laws that define rape as the absense of consent with penetration, by definition legally exclude all women from raping a man by having sex with him, no matter how drunk he is.
That would have been the old, nonfeminist, traditionalist definition, Lee. But by all means, if it helps you get to sleep at night, pretend that we lived a perfect world of inter-gender harmony until the feminists ruined everything.
Um, no. Not even close.
Perhaps there are folks at the right end of the tail who make gazillions. It might be correct to say “some of the highest paid attorneys practice divorce and family law” as i’m sure they exist.
But few go into those fields hoping to get rich (unlike, say, corporate, transactional, comercial real estate, tax, and a whole host of other legal fields). on average, and on median, they make much less than many others. That’s because they can’t bill businesses.
“Laws that define rape as the absense of consent with penetration, by definition legally exclude all women from raping a man by having sex with him, no matter how drunk he is.”
Thats actually the definition feminists are fighting, because it generally specifies penis in vagina penetration. And most women know quite well a penis and a vagina arent the only forms of rape. Thank your macho, white, western male peers for the idea men cant be raped. And while you’re at it, thank your western male peers who still do the majority of raping males and females alike.
“Laws that define women as a ‘minority’ and set aside a certain percentage University Admissions and other positions for women when women account for 60% of college enrollees and graduates obviously need to be changed or stricken.”
Women are treated as minorities. Always have been. Fix the advantage male students get from K-12th grade and we’ll stop evening the playing field in college enrollment.
And FYI, matriarchy isnt the polar opposite of patriarchy.
In your example, yes. But in the more common examples that’s not necessarily the case. I’m thinking of, “work extra time”, or “do a double shift, or pick up the extra work that’s not being done since Aaron was fired.” These might be under the boss’s control. But in my experience (not data, just an anecdote.) those shitty choices are created more by circumstances than by the boss.
those shitty choices are created more by circumstances than by the boss
Because Aaron was fired by a tornado, not a boss? Because “circumstances” physically prohibit the boss from hiring additional employees? C’mon.
At any rate, Lee’s bobbing and weaving because he wants to scream at women, like his sister, who “drop out” and “waste” their degrees, but he’s really reluctant to see the implications of his position. But admitting he’s doing something more than “how dare she take up a slot in an MD/JD/whatever program that a man should have had”, he’s pretending it’s a gender-neutral issue, and that he’s talking about some kind of social crisis where if a doctor occasionally takes time off to be at home with her kids, or quits his Mayo Clinic practice to volunteer in Indonesia, that we’ll wake up one day to find we have no doctors and THEN we’ll be sorry we listened to those goddamn feminists.
Or something. Anti-female rants are rarely coherent.
(I’m the cat herder former known as FurryCatHerder …)
joe writes:
Yes, but the BOSS is the one who has the power, not the employee.
The only effective power an employee has is the power to quit. The employee does not have the power to set their own schedule, regardless of the boss’s wishes, the power to set their own level of pay and benefits, or the power to set their hours and working conditions. Some of those might be set by the nature of the business or the nature of the work, but within the bounds of what’s possible for a given business and work assignment, the boss has the power. This is why unions negotiate for those items, and not for the right to quit (which employees already have) and why employers negotiate with unions for “No Strike” clauses (because employers already have the other powers).
Okay, what did I do wrong this time? Change my name?
Yup. Every first-time poster needs to have their first post approved “by hand.” When you change your name, the system thinks you’re a new poster.
So … can I now post as “Julie, Herder of Cats” so people will stop thinking I’m a furry herder of cats?
Aren’t all mammals furry somewhere?
Anyhow, yeah, go ahead and start posting as “Julie, Herder of Cats.” I’ll pay frequent attention to the blog for the next hour or so, so if your first post requires approval I’ll catch it quickly.
Every first-time poster needs to have their first post approved “by hand.” When you change your name, the system thinks you’re a new poster.
So if I started posting as J.R.R. Tolkein, would the system think I was a Tolkein poster?
Amp,
Thanks! I just posted to your latest PHMT thread and it apparently loved up on me and immediately took the post.
As for all mammals being furry, some mammals are more furry than others, just like some people are more equal than others :)
No, but the tornado took out the plant that supplies the parts that Aaron assembled and without them, they have nothing for Aaron to do. So in this case, yes the boss is physically prohibited from hiring more people.
I’m not arguing that the boss has less power. Or even that the power levels are equal. I’m arguing that in some cases the boss also has nothing but poor choices.
Note: I’m not talking about criminal orders such as ‘have sex with me or be fired.’
Here are some examples that I’ve seen in my life (not made up ones like the tornado)
Does the boss make me work a double shift or let the crew work short handed because someone called in sick? I don’t want a double shift but he could make me. If he makes me then I’m screwed but if he doesn’t than everyone else is screwed and the job fall behind schedule. He was there already with work of his own and couldn’t personally fill in for me.
A little higher up:
Does the plant manager re-balance the assembly line so that people are more productive (i.e. do more work) thus needing fewer people (no one got fired, there were buyouts / retirements) or not? If he does than people have a harder job. If he doesn’t than the plant will be a lot less competitive and there are more plants in the company than there is work. So the least efficient’ plant won’t get a new product to make.
All the way up
Does the company lean on everyone for as much as it can in an effort to stave off bankruptcy or just accept it and wait for the federal judge sort everything out? The company is loosing money, skipped raises for two years and hasn’t paid executive bonuses in three. (Big wig’s still make a lot of money but not like they were and the only reason there were raises is that the best people were quiting.) This one caused a LOT of people to have nothing but poor choices.
I’m not saying that all bosses don’t have better options. I’ve had bully bosses before and I’ve had them screw me over just because they could. But that’s not always the case.
The only good point I’ve seen Lee raise is that med school admits aren’t going up. But he ignored the obvious problem with that to complain about women.
Joe Writes:
March 18th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
At any rate, Lee’s bobbing and weaving because he wants to scream at women, like his sister, who “drop out” and “waste” their degrees, but he’s really reluctant to see the implications of his position. But admitting he’s doing something more than “how dare she take up a slot in an MD/JD/whatever program that a man should have had”, he’s pretending it’s a gender-neutral issue, and that he’s talking about some kind of social crisis where if a doctor occasionally takes time off to be at home with her kids, or quits his Mayo Clinic practice to volunteer in Indonesia, that we’ll wake up one day to find we have no doctors and THEN we’ll be sorry we listened to those goddamn feminists.
The only good point I’ve seen Lee raise is that med school admits aren’t going up. But he ignored the obvious problem with that to complain about women.
I complain about anyone who drops out and doesn’t utilise a scarce resource.
This is not about working private practice vs. working pro bono in the second world. That was your Red Herring. This is about someone getting a scarce Medical degree and then quitting the field at age 35 or 40, when we need Doctors to continue in their work for decades, not just until it suits them.
Where is the commitment and devotion to the vocation and career and profession? Someone who bails is not committed, and we would be right to ask Med School students to promise that they will stay in Medicine for a set period of time – men and women.
I don’t care that one hundred thousand Women’s Studies Majors are Barista’s or HR Clerks. That degree is next to useless.
I do care if Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers and Post-Grads get a degree and then don’t stick with it, wasting the education resources of this country.
Yes, including my sister.
BTW, we have already awoken to find we have fewer doctors.
I am sorry I was a Feminist in my 20’s, and as a nation we shouldn’t have listened to those goddamn feminists past 1977 or so.
Feminism was a mistake.
Equality was not.
Feminism has not been about Equality for almost two decades as of this writing.
This is not about working private practice vs. working pro bono in the second world. That was your Red Herring.
“Red Herring” is not a synonym for “point that Lee dislikes and would prefer to ignore”.
“Feminism has not been about Equality for almost two decades as of this writing. ”
Well thank god The Man has deigned to inform us goddamn feminists what our motivations are.
Just for shits and giggles, which feminism are you talking about? You DO know there’s more than 1 type and we’re not all borg or anything right? And since you have some fabulous mind meld ability, or a crystal ball, tell me what my motivation as a feminist is.
Ooh! pheeno and mythago team up on Lee? Let me go make some popcorn…
Lee, let me help you out. I’m going to stipulate all of your points. (Just for the sake of argument)
That medical degrees are scarce. That doctors are necessary. That women are likely not to use their degree as much as men. AND that this is bad not just for me personally but for society in general.
I don’t care. Society is made up of individual choices. People have a right to make choices I think are bad; like not studying hard. People have a right to make choices that are provably bad; like smoking.
If 90% of doctors tomorrow decided to only work 30 hour weeks I’m sure that it would be unpleasant for a while and than eventually people find a work ar0und. In other words; the market would adapt.
1. Lawyers aren’t rare. I think we have too many as it is.
2. Education isn’t a communal resource. While some portion is paid through taxes much of the cost of higher education is paid by the person getting it.
3. Shouldn’t you be more concerned with people ‘wasting’ their wholly public grade school education?
Anyway,
1) doctor scarcity is largely an artificial scarcity (look at the Cuban exportation of doctors over the past 40 years and you will see how many doctors a country can produce if it turns its mind to it)
2) a doctor who is only willing to work 3 days a week, or decides to quit being a doctor after ten years is preferable to the same person who is capable of becoming a doctor never becoming a doctor at all because doctors aren’t allowed to work flexible schedules or change careers.
3) to the extent doctor scarcity is inherent, it is a scarcity of people capable of being doctors, not a scarcity of medical school student slots, so excluding people from doctoring because they are unwilling to work 80 hour weeks just means that there are fewer doctors, not more doctors willing to work 80 hour weeks.
3) to the extent doctor scarcity is inherent, it is a scarcity of people capable of being doctors, not a scarcity of medical school student slots, so excluding people from doctoring because they are unwilling to work 80 hour weeks just means that there are fewer doctors, not more doctors willing to work 80 hour weeks.
That’s a damn good point.
Furthermore, if we want everyone who is capable of being a doctor to be a doctor, perhaps the focus ought to be on reducing the hours expected, so that prospective doctors could also have lives and families, rather than just blackballing anyone unwilling to sacrifice their lives and families.
I think I’d prefer to have a doctor who was passionate about her/his job than one who just didn’t want to waste the degree. I can deal with someone half assing my order of fries, but not so much with my health.
I think the money they make is a strong enough incentive to be a doctor. If their pay were to be cut we might need more incentive. Also, good points charles.
The only “shortage of doctors” is in poor, rural areas where doctors don’t make much money. You know, the kind of jobs that, if a woman with a prestigous M.D. took them, would make Lee scream about how she was wasting a degree that a man should have.
I wish Lee would get over his issues with his sister and stop pretending that she and his ex-wife embody All Females.
I trust that you can read for comprehension to the extent that you do not insert the word ‘All’ in your mind before the usage of any Noun that refers to a Group.
That when I post the word “Feminism” or “Men” or “Women” that this does not imply ALL of a group, but behavior of a significant number, usually a majority? The average, the aggregate, what most of a group does.
Most people understand this convention.
Some choices that are provably bad, people do not have a right to make, or they have the right to make them, but those choices are illegal.
Like Speeding, Vehicle Infractions, Selling Drugs to other consenting adults, Sex with minors, etc. Smoking is currently restricted to the point where soon one may not be allowed to smoke in the prescense of others in one’s home.
If we are going to accept Laws and Restrictions on our behavior, and as a Liberal Libertarian I would greatly prefer fewer Laws and Restrictions, then we have a right to ask that those who benefit from preferential Government Policy and Law – i.e. Female Med Students and Doctors – are required to make a certain commitment. If they use the law to their advantage, then we have a right to ask for a return on that scarce resource they obtained in part through legal and social preference.
If there were no AA laws for females in education, and the market was allowed to act freely, then this would not be an issue. But there are laws that prefer one group over another, and that group should then be held accountable.
Men who enter Med School should also commit to the career and be held accountable. But men aren’t currently the beneficiaries of AA to ‘rectify’ past ‘wrongs’, and most men are Doctors for life.
The Man? Come on. That is the type of thing a 17 year old Socialist who goes to Nicaragua (knew a guy like this in ’84) says.
No, it refers to proving one’s point by means of irrelevant arguments.
You assumed I was discussing people who work for great sums and those who work for less money, or those who work with the poor to ‘give back’.
Wrong.
This isn’t about how much money they earn with the degree, it is about whether they work fulltime hours for many decades, or work partime for 10 years and then quit.
I am certain you would prefer entertainment to discourse. This is a common thread on many Feminist or Left Blogs – only posts that are a source of amusement, or a chance to riff on dissenters, are posted.
Or dissenters are merely a source of ridicule.
To be fair, Amp has lately allowed my posts to go through, and I appreciate that.
Don’t worry, Lee – you’re plenty entertaining all by yourself, no matter who’s disagreeing with you or how.
lee wrote
Yes, laws are necessary. Anarchy has never lead to anything good.
If we are going to accept Laws and Restrictions on our behavior, and as a Liberal Libertarian I would greatly prefer fewer Laws and Restrictions, then we have a right to ask that those who benefit from preferential Government Policy and Law – i.e. Female Med Students and Doctors – are required to make a certain commitment. If they use the law to their advantage, then we have a right to ask for a return on that scarce resource they obtained in part through legal and social preference.
besides the trite response that you have the right to ask anything can you please help me understand where this right comes from? As a libertarian I assume that you’re either arguing that there’s a contract in place or that this is a natural right. But I don’t accept that. Can you persuade me?
So i assume that anyone who has a preference in admission would have a similar burden? This would include athletes and legacy admits.
Why do you put wrongs in scare quotes? Do you mean that there wasn’t a past practice of denying women admission to the medical profession? Really?
I think your argument is weak at best.
If Lee were really a Libertarian, he wouldn’t give a rip what “Female Med Students and Doctors” did with their degree, because if they paid for it, it’s their property. At most, he’d argue for the abolition of AA; he certainly wouldn’t argue for more laws to fix bad, existing laws.
For “Libertarian” here read “I don’t want the government telling ME what to do”.
“That when I post the word “Feminism” or “Men” or “Women” that this does not imply ALL of a group, but behavior of a significant number, usually a majority? The average, the aggregate, what most of a group does.
Most people understand this convention. ”
Most people understand that feminism isnt a monolith and recognize the foolishness in trying to force it into a box. They also recognize that much like anything else, the few that get soundbites in the media dont represent the whole nor the majority.
Again, *which* feminist theory do you speak of? When you say feminism, which one? If you dont actually mean all, then surely you can spare the time to specify.
“The Man? Come on. That is the type of thing a 17 year old Socialist who goes to Nicaragua …”
Would you care to hear about the type of man who talks about “western women”? He’s usually a divorced much older man who thinks all his problems are someone elses ( generally women) fault because he doesnt have the spine to accept his own mistakes. He then buys into the bullshit that “other types” of women would be lining up to lick his ass and then cant figure out why non western women wont fuck him either. Of course, the common denominator in all this is HIM, but naturally, he takes the cowards way out and once again like a spoiled toddler, blames everyone else.
Typically, he’s white and thinks not getting every priveldge that comes with being white means he’s getting shit on, when in reality, the world is just flat out refusing to kiss his ass anymore. The poor thing.
It never once occurs to this guy that HE’S the problem, not everyone else.
When he has far more representatives making and passing laws in this country, as well as enforcing them and far more lobbying for him, the only person he should be blaming for things not going his way is himself and his own utter incompetance. Maybe there’s a reason he shouldnt run things.
Most people understand this convention.
Yes, most people understand the rhetorical ‘convention’ of making an absolute all-X-are-Y statement, and then pretending, with great outrage, that because one didn’t actually SAY the word “all”, one clearly did not MEAN all, but “most” or “some” or “many” or some other vague qualifier. One is sometimes able to get away with this if one’s audience does not understand that, in English, a statement like “Cats are mammals” means “All cats are mammals” without having to use the qualifier.
I don’t make absolute statements – that is your bias filter assuming that when I post of ‘Women’ or ‘Feminists’ that I of course meant to write All Women or All Feminists. It is not my job to respond to words that you insert that I did not write.
If I intended to write ‘All Women are always X’ I would have done so.
Your usage of language and logic isn’t what you think it is. Your ‘argument’ has a basic logical flaw, one that most H.S. Debate Club members know.
You assume thus:
(x )are of group (y) to be the same as
(x)have quality (y).
You also used an improper analogy, as in Taxonomy all Cats ARE Mammals because being a mammal is not only a quality of Cats, but it is also the larger group that ALL Cats belong in.
This would not be the same with a non-Taxonomic analogy.
For Instance:
Apples taste good DNE All apples taste good.
I am not going to get into this argument over ‘All’; this is basic debate 101, common sense and reading comprehension.
I guess you’re googling feminism to discover which one you meant?
I am not going to get into this argument over ‘All’
Silly. You just did.
If you were above the high-school level of debate, you’d be aware that the “I meant ‘all’ but I’m going to pretend I didn’t when I’m called on it” trick is one highly recommended by Capaldi.
From Lee’s name-linked site:
So if a man hates his job, it’s ok for him to quit – and in fact, if he’s kept from doing so by the circumstances he has chosen for himself by marrying and staying married to someone whom he chose to marry, it’s oppression. But the one anecdote Lee has of a woman making the same decision regarding an unsatisfying career is enough to systematically deny women education? OK, that’s consistent and rational.
That’s aside from the incredible offensiveness of comparing anything he could have possibly dealt with in his life to the institution of slavery, of course.