Empowering women workers in occupational, safety, health

Kuala Lumpur: As an occupational safety and health (OSH) practitioner for over 20 years, Norwani Ahmat has climbed up steep heights, walked through narrow and dark tunnels and carried out checks and audits in high-risk and dangerous places in her line of work.

Working in a sector that is dominated by men, Norwani’s job demands grit and determination when she is doing fieldwork.

Among the most challenging experience she has had was the time when she, as a safety and health officer (SHO), was involved in investigating an accident at the Bakun hydroelectric dam project site in Sarawak.

“At the dam, we had to pass through a dark tunnel and climb a 200-metre-high stairway, as well as sleep in a cabin for a week.

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“Another unforgettable experience was when I was assigned to carry out an audit and investigate an accident at the Hyderabad International Airport in India. There were riots there then, so we had to speed up our audit work and return to Malaysia as soon as possible for safety reasons,” recalled Norwani, who is now an operational excellence manager at Lynas Malaysia. The OSH sector deals with the management of employee safety, health and welfare, as well as ensuring a safe and healthy working environment for the workforce and management.

In Malaysia, OSH-related matters come under the purview of the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) and are regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 and its subsidiary regulations.

Under the Act, employers in certain industrial sectors are required to employ staff with expertise in OSH to serve as SHO, safety and health supervisor, occupational health doctor and safety and health consultant and auditor, among others.

Norwani said in the early 1990s, SHOs were mainly confined to construction sites and that it was only in the late 90s when industries started hiring safety officers.

“It’s a fact that the participation of women in OSH is quite low. When I attended SHO classes at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in early 2000, out of the 30 students there I was the only woman,” she told Bernama.

She said many people regarded OSH as not suited to women as the work required them to be physically and emotionally resilient.

“In short, the person has to be ready to face any challenge and difficulty… she has to work under the hot sun and be ready to go here and there, including places deemed dangerous and risky. It’s definitely not for those who are too gentle and care about their appearance,” she added.

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According to Norwani, women only accounted for less than five percent of the estimated 2,000 SHOs registered with DOSH.

Nevertheless, the number of women serving as occupational health doctors and hygiene technicians is seen to be on the rise, she said.

She feels more women should consider pursuing a career in OSH because their meticulous nature would come in handy when carrying out safety checks and audits.

“Also, their caring and compassionate nature would make it easier for them to advise, teach and reprimand workers,” she said, adding that the employment of more women in OSH would help to strengthen this sector in Malaysia.

OSH consultant Haslayati Hashim, meanwhile, said understanding the differences in the needs and capabilities of male and female employees in the field of OSH would require a new paradigm shift.

She said the assumption that men were mentally stronger than women is no longer valid as women have made inroads into various fields.

“The generalisation that women are better at OSH reporting and documenting tasks should not be a barrier to denying them the opportunity to prove their ability to conduct site examinations and work in the field.

“Men and women have their respective strengths and weaknesses that are influenced by individual and work environment factors,” she said, adding that organisations should have specific policies that are relevant to gender mainstreaming to avoid employee selection and job placement based on gender stereotype and physical factors. It is time for employers to erase the perception that male OSH staff deserve higher remuneration as they do most of the “heavy work”, she said, pointing out that the rise in occupational accidents and illnesses among women workers also demanded more effective OSH management and higher intake of female OSH experts.

Haslayati, who has worked in the OSH field for 16 years and is an industry representative on the OSH Industry Standards Committee at the Department of Standards Malaysia, believed that organisations should focus more on the aspect of support for women employees and endeavour to improve policies, processes and procedures that currently prevent women from upgrading their technical skills and being appointed to certain posts. It was found that among the participants who attended courses and training at NIOSH in 2019, only 10,577 of them or 8.9 percent were women. – Bernama

“The statistics shocked me… I’m sure a lot more can be done to facilitate women OSH employees to obtain the necessary skills and technical expertise,” she said, adding that the gap between male and female OSH employees can be bridged with reforms in human resource development policies and education and by enhancing support networks to enable women to secure more career opportunities in the OSH field.

Sharing her views on her career, Associate Prof Dr Irniza Rasdi, who is head of Occupational Health Unit at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Universiti Putra Malaysia, said her job specifications as an OSH researcher and consultant involve the mental health aspect (of workers) as well as identifying hazards and risk assessment at worksites.

“I’ve gone on ‘offshore’ duties… construction sites to carry out research where, sometimes, I would be the only woman on the premises,” she said.

Urging more women to join the field, Irniza said career prospects in OSH are wide as occupational safety and health is a compulsory element for many organisations in both the government and private sectors. “The field of OSH requires expertise in areas such as safeguarding the psychological health of workers as well as behaviour management, which are suited to women,” she added.

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