CSA survey on women’s PPE finds you can’t just shrink it and pink it
By / Angela Gismondi | Daily Commercial News
When it comes to making PPE for women’s bodies, you can’t just shrink it and pink it.
A new report published by CSA Group, “Canadian Women’s Experiences with Personal Protective Equipment in the Workplace,” found only six percent of women say PPE they wear is designed for them.
The report looks at the current state of how PPE is meeting the needs of women and includes first-hand experiences, said Jennifer Teague, vice-president of standards research and planning with CSA Group. It’s based on the results of a survey of nearly 3,000 Canadian women from different sectors.
“What became clear in that report was that this is a longstanding issue. This is something that has been raised for decades, but certainly as society progresses and we get better at really considering the individual needs of populations and greater movement towards equity diversity and inclusivity, we wanted to take a harder close look at the experiences of women in terms of their PPE,” Teague told the Daily Commercial News.
According to the report, the three most common problems the women surveyed have are: it does not fit properly (50 percent); it is uncomfortable to wear (43 percent); and the selection of women-specific PPE is inadequate (35 percent).
They reported they use PPE that is the wrong size at least some of the time (58 percent); they don’t wear all the required PPE at work because of issues with fit (28 percent); and they use a workaround to make their PPE fit (38 percent).
Read the full article at: https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/ohs/2022/11/csa-survey-on-womens-ppe-finds-you-cant-just-shrink-it-and-pink-it
