Occupational Health Problems Experienced by Women Workers in Building Construction Industry

Abstract

Construction industry provides job opportunity to large number of skilled as well as unskilled work force. The work force employed in the construction industry have to face several difficulties at the workplace. Several issues related to health, job stress, injuries, occupational details and work site environment at work place are the major concern of the study.  Keeping this in view a study was conducted to know occupational health problems experienced by the women workers in building construction industry. The data regarding socio personal characteristics and perceived health problems of women workers were collected by using pre tested structured interview schedule from 120 rural women workers worked in local construction sites of Dharwad taluka. The data on Musculo-skeletal problems were collected by using Corlett and Bishop [1] body map. Results revealed that more than 30 per cent of respondents had less than 5 years of work experience (35.83%) in construction, In case of type of site ground, half of the respondents experienced that the ground was too muddy (54.20%). As concerned with work place 57.50 per cent of women reported that the eating place were unhygienic. An observation into the mean scores revealed that, among the upper extremities upper back/ cervical region pain had highest mean score of 4.73 depicting very severe pain in this region. Swelling of body parts were the hazard experienced by 19.17 per cent women, followed by skin infection (6.67%) and fall / fractures (7.50%). There was significant relationship between temperature and eye pain whereas, significant relationship between humidity and shoulder joint was found and both were significant at 0.05 level.