Studying gender and injuries: a comparative analysis of the literatures on women's injuries in sport and work

Abstract

This article provides a review and analysis of the literatures on the gendering of injuries in sport and in work. It argues that, while research on women's work-related injuries has considered the interaction of biological and social bases of risk, research on women's injuries in sport has concentrated to a greater extent on biological risk factors alone. The difference in emphasis between these two literatures has, in turn, provoked contrasting responses to these sets of research. While bringing women into the discussion of work-related injuries is seen as an advance, the profiling of women's sport-related injuries has been viewed with alarm by critics, who see this as a return to historical notions of women's frailty. The analysis suggests that contrasts between these bodies of research derive from differences in the social organisation of sport and work and the broader literatures on health and safety in each setting. The article highlights the importance of conceptualisations of gender in research agenda devoted to understanding health-related concerns.

Practitioner Summary: The analysis presented here has important relevance to ergonomics because of the need to better understand how gender is implicated in ergonomics research and practice.

Keywords:

• gender
• injuries
• sport and work

Notes

1. While ‘performance’ is more often used in sport and ‘production’ in reference to work, each term is found in reference to outcomes in both sport and work: athletes ‘produce’ under pressure and corporations tally ‘performance’ sheets.

2. Epstein (2007, p. 27) provides a discussion of his use of the terms sex profiling and sex differences. Citing the point made in this article about the growing consensus that sex is not a biological given, he provides the following explanation of the terms he uses: ‘Sex differences … refer to socially, culturally and historically specific understandings of anatomical or biological differences between men and women; … gender differences … refer to understandings of differences between men's and women's places in society, their roles and social identities’.

3. In contrast to the paid labour force in the developed work (and recognising the presence of child labourers in some parts of the world), participants in sport include girls and women. For the sake of simplicity, this chapter will employ the term ‘women’ in discussions of both sport and work.

4. For a related research project the present author is conducting on scientific constructions of injuries in women's sports, a database was constructed in the summer of 2009 of publications on ACL injuries in women's sports published between 1999 and 2009. Using combinations of the search terms anterior cruciate ligament, injury, mechanism, and women and including clinical, research and review articles, a total of 1073 references were identified.