Margaux Fodéré 7:40 a.m., August 5, 2022, modified at 7:42 a.m., August 5, 2022

Women are increasingly victims of accidents in the workplace.

In 20 years, the number of accidents at work has globally decreased for men, while those of women have increased by 42%.

This is the finding of a study by the National Agency for the Improvement of Working Conditions, Anact.

A worrying trend, especially since the accidents of which they are victims are often more serious.

A recent study by the National Agency for the Improvement of Working Conditions (Anact), which denounces the limits of prevention policies, shows that over the past 20 years, work-related accidents have decreased significantly among men while registering a strong increase in women.

Indeed, the number of work accidents among women increased by 42%, while it fell by 27% among men. 

Burnout at work

Between the mornings spent outside in the crops, and the sometimes risky manipulations in the laboratory, Marie experienced a trying end-of-studies internship.

Exhaustion quickly arrived and with it, an accident.

“On May 20, 2022, I burned myself with concentrated nitric acid on my forearm”, she remembers at the microphone of Europe 1. “When I was doing my manipulations in the laboratory, I took the bad acid, 65% concentrated acid. I realized at that moment that I was wrong and so I put this acid back in its bottle. I did not see any drops flowing, but then I felt a burn". 

Finally, more fear than harm, this burn did not earn him a stoppage, only care to be applied to the skin for a week.

But these workplace accidents are increasingly common among women.

Philippe Tréhou, a doctor in the Lille region, saw this clearly. 

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Physical and almost exclusively female jobs

"In mind, I have work accidents for women who work on the assembly line, like in a perfume factory which bottling perfumes. These are almost exclusively female jobs", he explains on Europe 1.

"We have seen the development for many years of home help jobs, personal help jobs that did not exist before. And these jobs, unfortunately, are quite physical jobs with the handling of elderly people".

From now on, women represent more than a third of accidents at work.