> >I was absolutely blown away by that statistic! Over 80% of the OSH undergrads at Keene State are white males? What do the demographics of Keene State look like overall?
>
The overall demographic of KSC undergrads is 54% female. Safety & Occupational Health Applied Sciences is the second most largest major with 307, behind education (440). So there is a gendered structure to students' choices of major. Faculty are very close to 50/50 female/male campuswide, but specific departments are gender-tilted.

> > I have had several conversations with people about who has been attracted to the LST movement and to discussions about safety in academic labs, and it appears to be very heavily female. It has been hypothesized that this may be because women often feel ‰??responsible‰?? for others and that safety could be connected to the concept of ‰??nurture.‰?? That being said, I also notice a very heavily male component to safety within the industrial context.

My experience in a variety of settings your observations about gendered ongoing interest in safety issues is similar. Broadly speaking, females appear to be more willing to spend time pursuing safety issues in lab settings. Sometime this is because they are interested in the more social aspects of the workplace, other times this is due to specific experiences that they have had that raised their concerns about their health and safety.

Safety professionals in other sectors (emergency planning and response, industrial sectors, teaching and research faculty) tend to tilt male. My impression is that they tend to pursue safety as a career goal rather than as part of another professional job. I think that the factors that affect professional pipelines in general (glass ceilings, role models, perceptions of who should represent an organization, personality fit within management) affect safety students and professionals alike.

For me, one important point of interest in this discussion is helping to uncover questions that don't get asked because of the gender tilt of the safety profession.

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Environmental Safety Manager
Keene State College
603 358-2859

ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu

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