OiRA increases legal certainty

The occupational safety regulations have long been oriented towards men’s workplaces. As part of the efforts to enforce equal rights for men and women in the workplace, occupational safety legislation and risk assessment should not overlook the specific needs of women’s workplaces.

With the OiRA Internet platform, the European Agency for Safety and Health and Syslabcom provide industry-specific tools that also include assessment criteria for women’s workplaces.

Assess women workplaces correctly 

Men and women are exposed to different risks in the workplace and therefore need different occupational safety. But it still works like this: men’s risks are generally recognized, whereas the risks for women in the workplace are trivialized. A good risk assessment as basis for a responsible occupational safety takes men’s and women’s work sectors equally seriously. 

Hence women more often than men suffer from chronic pain and stress. They also more often become ill with asthma, allergies and skin diseases. Above all particular attention should be paid to occupational safety for women lifting loads.

The activities of women in nursing professions involves specific risks and must therefore be reflected in the risk assessment. The allowable lifting load for women at work is drastically lower than for men. Thus if you use the OiRA tool for the risk assessment, you do not have to laboriously research every health and safety regulation. 

All legal limits and regulations are up-to-date. You will be guided through the risk areas and can go through the risk assessment for all women in the workplace point by point. The systematic processing of the OiRA questionnaire for risk assessment furthermore increases the legal certainty in occupational safety for women.

“Easy” women’s work can be difficult 

Women are particularly strongly represented in the service industry, teaching and educational professions as well as in the health and social sectors. In these and many other industries, 90 percent of part-time work falls on women. So this leads to the following conclusion: when considering the risk of women in the workplace, the assessment must include the fact that many women in addition to their work also take care of household and family. 

Similarly, a professional risk assessment must take into account that so-called light women’s work, when monotonous and under time pressure, is also a case for occupational safety. The resulting shoulder-neck syndrome is consequently much more common among women than among men.

Another woman-specific aspect in the risk assessment is the protection of the expectant mother. As an occupational safety officer, you must therefore be up-to-date with legislation and must not omit any hazardous points in the risk assessment. In short with OiRA you get a safe guide that leads you through all the current aspects of risk assessment and helps you do women as well as men in the workplace equally justice.