Homicide is now the leading cause of work-place death, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that homicide is the leading cause of death for WOMEN at work, accounting for 42% of all work-related fatalities.
The link above is to a short segment on CNN regarding workplace violence. The segment highlights the recent murder of Annie Le at Yale University, the murder of a woman at a plastic factory, as well as the murder of a young woman named Erin who was beaten to death while working the night shift at Tim Horton's, which happened here in Maine where I live.
I am really disgusted that they are calling the murders mentioned herein, and others like it, "workplace violence." Yes, workplace violence is one component of what is going on here, but the segment fails to represent or highlight that this isn't just an issue about workplace violence, this is an issue about violence against women. All three of the women mentioned above were killed by men in isolated incidents; meaning, no other employees were targeted. These were deliberate, planned and viscous attacks.
I am not trying to undermine the men and women who have died in violent workplace related crimes. My point is that there is clearly a much deeper and systemic issue that many of us are aware of, that none of the news outlets want to address regarding brutality and violence against women - in the workplace and outside of it (The recent shooting at a PA health club comes to mind).
I wish CNN had done some research and given a little perspective on the topic that they were presenting. It makes me sad that even when the facts present themselves in such horrific ways, the individuals responsible for educating the majority of Americans fail time and time again to do their job. They fall short, for whatever reason, and it sickens me, because it continues to perpetuate the idea that everything is A-OK. That women are now safe, they have overcome and conquered. All of the issues of the past (oppression, subordination, misogyny, and the list goes on and on) are just that, in the past, when in reality, we still have so very far to go.
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I'm just trying to get a better feel for the gendered nature of the crime, maybe you could provide some more information:
Do you have any figures on how many of those women's homicides were carried out by men?
Is it that more women are murdered at work than men, or are the disproportionate percentages the result of more men being killed in other ways?
Kandela,
From what I can find, there are no statistics on how many homicides are perpetrated by men vs. women. I do know from my own background that domestic violence is often interrelated to workplace homicides of women - which is a related, yet separate issue in of itself.
The three cases that CNN cites are men targeting specific women for reasons unknown. I recall in the Maine case that the defendant claimed is romantic advances were turned down, and this was partly the motivator behind the crime, but I would have to double check on that.
Here is a link to an article, I don't know when it was published. I will try and find some more information for you: http://www.albany.edu/pr/updates/update5.11-1.html
Regardless, it's the leading cause of death for women in the workplace. More women die at work as a result of homicide than anything else. It's an issue, and I think it deserves being looked at with more specification that simply "workplace violence."
Ok, so from my reading what you are worried about is homicides against women being mis-labeled as workplace homicides. In the examples you gave these murders could have occured in any setting but were labeled as workplace deaths because the victim and perpatrator knew each other through work. If this mislabelling is wide spread then it would have the effect of downplaying violence against women. Without figures on the motives of the homicides though it is hard to tell.
I agree with TD and in particular James Gilmore below. If we look at what the statistics are telling us we see that men are at far greater risk of accident in the workplace - probably as a result of occupation, but I'm guessing that is not the whole story. I'd say there is still a culture of expecting that men will perform the more dangerous tasks on the worksite.
But also that just going by these figures men in the workplace are around 4 times more likely to be the victims of a homicide classified as a 'workplace homicide.' The reasons for this surely need to be investigated more thoroughly. Once again figures on motive could be quite illuminating.
I'm failing to see where you get your statistics from. Homicides make up 26% of workplace fatalities for women, it makes up 9% for men, but this is not because women are more likely to be killed in the workplace, quite the opposite that statistic is only generated because men are more likely to die from other causes. More men die in workplace homicides specifically then women die in workplace fatalities total.
BLS: Workplace Fatalities by Incident and Select Worker Characteristics
For example in 2008
Men suffered 4,703 fatalities in the workplace
Of these 1035 were vehicular*
423 were homicides
658 were the result of falls
517 were the result of being struck by an object
Women suffered 368 fatalities in the workplace
103 of them were vehicular*
96 of them were homicides
40 of them were falls
11 of them were struck by an object
(numbers might not add up due to rounding)
*includes deaths to vehicle occupants resulting from traffic incidents that occur on the public roadway, shoulder, or surrounding area. It excludes incidents occurring entirely off the roadway, such as in parking lots and on farms; incidents involving trains; and deaths to pedestrians or other nonpassengers.
A couple of things, first:
1. When looking at the stats, remember women make up less of the workforce than men, so you need to look at those numbers in comparison with the percentage of women in the workplace vs. men.
2. 2008 numbers are not confirmed. I think we should look at numbers from 2005 and 2003 when citing statistics, since those numbers are not preliminary. The 2008 numbers won't be confirmed until next year.
3. I am not suggesting that men are victims of homicide at a lower rate than women are, I am looking at it in terms of the larger picture, and the circumstances under which said homicides occur, i.e. the motivation and why women are victims of homicide, and as a result, this leads to homicide being the leading cause of death for women at work.
4. I am going to link to a study that breaks it down nicely (much better than I can). Women who are the victims of homicides at work are much more likely to have been killed by a family member, or someone they know. Whereas 85% male homicides were the result of robbery, and so on and so forth.
I am looking at the why more than anything else.
Does this help?
Here is the article. Page #2 has a nice breakdown of how the homicide statistics break down.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/10/art4full.pdf
1.) The difference is not that large. It certainly does not make up for the fact that 93% of workplace fatalities happen to men. But fine, in 2005 men made up 52.6% of the workforce, women made up 47.4 basically this means that there are around 10% more men in the workforce than women, were any of the numbers close to being 10% away from each other?
2.) 2005 doesn't support your thesis either that year men suffered 477 workplace homicides, women suffered a total of 402 fatalities, and 92 workplace homicides.
3.) Again, homicides are not the leading cause, vehicular accidents are. Even in 2005, back to 1999 homicides has only exceeded vehicular accidents once in 2002 for women. Which in fact proves the role, because homicides in 02 were not statistically significant from any of other years, what changed were the other death rates. The only reason it becomes a leading cause is because women are not exposed to the same number of other risks. Women as a whole are safer at work, from all types of workplace fatalities then men.
4.) You read that wrong, 85% of homicides as the result of a robbery had male victims. Not 85% of male victims of homicide are victims of robberies. Further when we're talking about domestic violence we are looking at 4-5 men who were victims of domestic violence annually at the workplace compared to 9-10 women. This hardly speaks to the culture of workplace violence, it has numbers small enough that most times statistical sources would be unable to publish them for fear of publishing individually identifiable information.
If we are looking at the why I think you're conveniently ignoring all the violence against men and sidestepping the much larger problem in order to paint this as an issue which only affects women. How about talking about why men are so much more likely to be victims of robbery?
For example some companies will opt for more expensive lodging for their traveling workers if women are in the group. If it is only men they will opt for the least expensive lodging in the least safe place, because if something happened to a female worker they'd view it as more of a tragedy.
There is sexism here, but I think your barking up the wrong tree.
Vehicular accidents for women only exceed by a small margin in 2008 (i.e. 2%), so I am not really sure how this proves anything.
To be clear, I am not talking about all types of workplace related injury or death, I am specifically talking about violent ones.
Women do not have the same access to construction jobs, forestry jobs, fishing jobs, etc. than men do, and these are work categories of high risk. Perhaps this is a reason that women are more “insulated or less exposed” than men are to work related injury or death, but that is a separate topic all together.
Yes, more men are victims of homicide than women are. But when looked at in terms of sheer percentages, 26% of all of the work related deaths for women was homicide, as opposed to 9% for men. That is a stark difference, especially considering that only 7% of work related fatalities were women.
So, in conclusion, while men die at a higher rate at work then women do, the percentage of women dying as a result of homicide is still greater (by a significant margin) than it is for men. WHY IS THAT?
And you’re right, I did read that statistic regarding robberies incorrectly, but that doesn’t change the fact that more women are killed by someone they know or a family member in work related homicides than men are. And that is directly linked to domestic violence, which frankly is still an overlooked and neglected issue for both women and men in this country.
the percentage of women dying as a result of homicide is still greater (by a significant margin) than it is for men. WHY IS THAT?
I obviously can't make this assertion with any kind of certainty, but I think you answered your own question when you wrote that "Women do not have the same access to construction jobs, forestry jobs, fishing jobs, etc. than men do, and these are work categories of high risk."
The proportion of women dying from workplace homicide as a part of total women's workplace deaths is much higher than that for men because some of the most dangerous jobs - construction, forestry, long-haul driving - are male-dominated. This means we need to (a) improve workplace safety standards for these high-risk jobs and (b) ensure that women have access to these jobs.
I think this is a good point, but I don't think that we can assume that from the numbers one way or another, as you point out. I think the number would be inflated regardless (assertion on my part).
Regardless, I think it's am important topic. Thanks for your input.
We easily can draw that assertion.
For example, for employed workers .63 men per 100,000 in 2005 were the victim of a workplace homicide
The same risk for women was one fifth of that at .12 women per 100,000
Now women aren't in the fields with the most workplace fatalities such as agriculture, fishing, construction etc. And this explains why they do not have significant fatalities from falls or being hit by an object.
Yet women are exposed to robberies, in fact retail positions are predominantly staffed by women. Despite this, men are more likely to be victims of homicide committed during a robbery (to use a source you cited earlier) 0.252 men per 100,000 will be the victim of a murder committed during a robbery of their workplace only 0.036 women per 100,000 will be the victim of the same.
How would this support a hypothesis that women are at increased risk?
First, how do we know that more women than men staff retail stores? You might be right, I just want to see where that info comes from.
There may be more men being shot in the head during a robbery, which I would argue is a random act of violence, in that the place of work was chosen because of the time of day, location, lack of staff, etc.
I am interested in violence against women PERIOD, in this instance the location of the crime happens to be in the workplace. I UNDERSTAND that men are at a higher risk, but I think you are missing the point of the motivation and reasons behind the crime. Random violence is different than gendered violence. i.e. pregnant women aren't at such a great risk of homicide for no reason, and I think the same could be applied to many (NOT ALL) of the instances of female homicide at work.
If we want to break it down more, I think it is applicable to the three examples I cite in my original post.
BLS 2008: 11. Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity
% women
Sales and Office Occupations 63.2
Cashiers 75.5
Retail salespersons 52.2
the point of the motivation and reasons behind the crime. Random violence is different than gendered violence.
You haven't bothered to prove that these women are at a substantially increased risk of gendered violence. You simply saw that men were more likely to victims of violence and concluded that because it impacted men it wasn't worth your consideration.
Please we are talking about 10 women compared to 5 men when we are looking specifically at what you allege by your own statistics. This is not how workplace fatalities occur. The vast majority occur when companies decide that they are too busy to invest in their workers safety. That a few deaths are acceptable losses. They make these conclusions because they feel that their male workers are expendable.
Female workers receive safer lodging, and drastically increased investment in their safety, they are not exposed to societal strain which forces them to work in drastically less safe workplaces in order to provide for their family. Hell back in the 19th and early 20th century it was only when female workers started dying that people began to think of implementing workplace safety standards.
Almost five thousand men die annually from workplace accidents. More men die in homicides in the workplace than women do in the workplace from any cause. And you want me to believe that this is about violence against women? Women are not the ones suffering from five times the murder rate. Are men supposed to take comfort from the fact that they are five times more likely to be shot by a disgruntled coworker or robber? Do the ten annual cases you cite make up for that?
I am not trying to downplay or ignore the FACT that men are at a greater risk of workplace related fatalities than women. And I resent that you insinuate that I am trying to do that. It is clearly a big issue for men at the workplace, and demands being looked at more closely, maybe you should write a post about it....
But it's not what I am referring to in my post. The THREE INCIDENTS I CITE were more than just "workplace homicides." The attacks were specific, brutal and isolated, but THEY WERE NOT ADDRESSED AS SUCH. MY point is that I am talking about cases where women are victims of homicide and there is a motivation other than just sheer instability, sociopath tendencies, whatever you want to call it, which somehow you can't grasp because you keep on saying that men are at a greater risk of homicide than women (at work); yes, I get that, but when the reasons for the homicide against women are more than just "random," I think that needs to be looked at and not ignored by the media. This is my own conclusion and not based on numbers. It is merely my opinion that often times work place violence against women is mis-labeled (as Kandela points out) and this is where I take issue.
My particular interest is how domestic violence extends into the workplace for women. If you want to write about the lack of safety for men at the workplace or the number of men shot by intimate partners at the work place, that is fine. However, it is not what this post is about. This post was on a very narrow, specific topic related to violence and women.
Wow. Looking at these numbers I would say that public attention should be attracted to male fatalities. Of all types. I mean if 5 times more men died by being struck by the object than women by homicide... maybe it makes sense to look deeper into the first issue.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/why-did-workplace-deaths-fall-in-2008/
Percentage wise, more women than men died as a result of homicide. That is using the Bureau of Labor stats.
You can use statistics to prove your particular point without shedding light on what else the numbers show.
And by "you" I mean you're only showing one side of the data in very crude number terms, when there is a bigger picture to look at - which is my whole point.
I hope the information provided shows you the whole picture in a way my post clearly failed at doing :)
I will stop posting now. Sorry.
They are a higher percentage no because they are dying more frequently but only because men are more exposed to other risks.
What the numbers show is women are less exposed to workplace fatalities as a whole, they are particularly unexposed to risk of death from falls, or being struck by an object. They are slightly less insulated from workplace homicides and vehicular accidents. However, even then they are substantially less exposed.
I'm also really frustrated by the term "workplace violence" in the case Annie Le etc.....and not because I believe the assalient was acting out sexual violence.
I mean, what's the different between Annie Le not cleaning her cages and big, beefy, John Doe? Why was she specifically targeted and not someone else?
I feel there might be a gender connection.
I totally agree that the Yale university case is not just about workplace violence, but violence against women. I see a lot of comments about male workplace deaths, but I doubt that any of them were gender related, whereas female workplace deaths are.
-Nikki-
Thank you for posting this, I was thinking the exact same thing. The murderer in this case had a history of domestic violence, too. This was most definitely an issue of violence against women. CNN said "about 500 people are killed in the workplace" and that is nothing compared to the statistics of women who are victims of violence:
-Somewhere in America a woman is battered, usually by her intimate partner, every 15 seconds. (UN Study On The Status of Women, Year 2000)
-One out of every six American women have been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. (Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey, National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1998)
-In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner.1 That's an average of three women every day. Of all the women murdered in the U.S., about one-third were killed by an intimate partner. (Bureau of Justice Statistics)
Interesting. This is Howard Stern's take on domestic violence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbZyVDvhvSc