Women's Accessibility to Properly Fitting Personal Protective Clothing and Equipment in the Australian Construction Industry

Abstract

With a growing diverse workforce in the construction industry, properly fitting personal protective clothing and equipment (PPE) is an essential component of safety for any worker. As a minority group in the industry, there is much anecdotal evidence of women's difficulties in accessing properly fitting PPE. Based on a large-scale online survey, this study explores the difficulties experienced by women in the Australian construction industry in accessing properly fitting PPE. While PPE for women is available on the market, the results show that access to properly fitting PPE is still a major issue for women workforces in the industry. The problems they are facing include: the need to make alterations or adjustments to ill-fitting PPE, the lack of adequate training or proper use of PPE in their job tasks, and ill-fitting PPE has hampered their work in some way. The male-dominated culture of the construction industry has been identified as the top key reason for their lack of access to properly fitting PPE. These thus call for the industry stakeholders to address women's PPE concerns, and one key step would be to promote awareness of women's PPE needs within the construction industry.