PPE for Women: Ensuring Safety and Comfort
Advancements in women-specific personal protective equipment (PPE) are helping improve safety, performance, and comfort for women in industrial environments, and there are several steps employers can take to better protect women workers.
- By Gina Godeen
- Aug 01, 2024
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is essential for ensuring worker safety in hazardous environments. Historically, PPE has been designed primarily for men. However, a male workforce no longer exclusively dominates the working trades.
In 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that women comprised nearly 30 percent of the manufacturing workforce, and roughly 11 percent of construction. Those numbers have continued to grow in recent years.
As more women enter industries like construction, manufacturing, and mining, the need for PPE designed specifically for women has been in greater demand.
The Importance of Proper Fit in PPE
Ill-fitting PPE can pose significant safety risks. Loose-fitting apparel, for example, can get caught in machinery, compromising worker safety. Similarly, gloves that do not fit correctly can decrease grip, leading to accidents.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has proper fit requirements to ensure PPE protects workers effectively. While this has been a long-time requirement for general industry, it’s not technically incorporated into the construction regulations. But that is expected to be changing soon.
On July 19, 2023, OSHA published its personal protection equipment (PPE) in construction proposed rule. The proposed change would clarify that PPE must fit each employee properly to protect them from occupational hazards and would align the language in OSHA’s PPE standard for construction with its standards for general industry and maritime.
OSHA notes that the failure of standard-sized PPE to protect physically smaller construction workers properly, as well as problems with access to properly fitting PPE, have long been safety and health concerns in the construction industry, especially for women.
Improperly fitting PPE may fail to provide protection to an employee, present additional hazards, or discourage employees from using it in the workplace.
Poorly fitting PPE can also hinder task performance, making work slower and less efficient.
One woman from a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) study shared her experience. “They gave me a welding leather jacket that was a foot longer than my hand. And gloves humongous I couldn’t even pick anything up.”
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.