Protection and Wellbeing Issues among Female Building Workforce

Safety and Health issues among Female Construction Workforce 1
Protection and wellbeing issues among Female Building Workforce
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Safety and Health issues among Female Construction Workforce 2
Protection and wellbeing issues among Female Building Workforce
Introduction
The Australian building industry is facing an inadequately qualified workforce, forcing
numerous building companies to outsource and expand the effects of recruitments on previously
untapped labor sources, especially women (Zhao 2014, p.2697). Currently, the number of
women in the building workforce stands at about 4.7% in the global ranking and are always from
the age of 16 years. Unlike men in building sites, women tend to face more protection and
wellbeing hazards more than men due to their gender and feminine stature. Some of the
protection and wellbeing hazards include falls, electrocution, repetitive-motion, exposure to
hazardous wastes, among many others (Daniel 2015, p.10). Over the years, most the research
conducted on the protection and wellbeing issues in building focused on men with little focus on
women; therefore, there is significant need to explore the current situation and make
recommendations on protection and wellbeing issues on the women workforce in building jobs.
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassments remain one of the most issues affecting the health and safety of
women in the building workforce who recorded the highest incidents of sexual harassment after
work discriminations. Workplace sexual harassments s not only an equal employment issue but
are recognized as a protection and wellbeing issue in the current workplace. Sexual harassments
disrespect the law barring sex discernment in employment Act, that identifies issues such as
undesirable sensual moves, forced sexual favour and any other spoken or bodily conduct
perceived to be in sexual nature ( Wynen 2016,p.356). The sexual harassment is always
perceived to always to create intimidation and hostile working environment. In accordance with

Safety and Health issues among Female Construction Workforce 3
Federal Building and Contractors Compliance, employers are expected to provide a free
harassment environment since sexual harassment in the workplace can cause fear, danger and
assault.
Australian building industry language tends to be more masculine set values and
language, which mostly results in sexual harassment to female workers. In Australia, studies
indicate that more than 40% of surveyed female building workers at one point faced some sexual
harassment at the workplace such as sexual comments, staring, unwanted sexual suggestions and
male crew member exposing obscene body parts.
Sanitary facilities
Sanitary amenities are essential to any workplaces that consist of women. Inaccessibility
of the sanitary facilities has remained one of the key issues in the building sites. Most of the
temporary facilities are always unisex, thus reducing the privacy level and at times poorly
maintained enhancing the rate of infections. International labor judges have interpreted that the
absence of adequate female hygienic amenities are in contradiction to the workplace OSHA
standard since they pose threats to the wellbeing of the workers (Yuvaraj et al.,2015,p.317).
Women tend to have high chances of contracting infectious diseases than men, notably when the
sanitary facilities are missing and poorly maintained since most of the women will delay using
the facilities. According to the studies conducted on numerous worksites, especially building
sites, tend to have inappropriate sanitary facilities (Yuvaraj et al., 2015, p.317). For example, in
1987 the USA court found out that a female building worker; Eileen Lynch was fired after being
found to have used a clean and fully equipped restroom that was not meant for building workers.
Lynch always used the restroom since she had been diagnosed with a bladder infection and could