Female Officers' Health Leaflet

Wed, 05 November 2008 Courtesy of: Police Federation

The police service is now recruiting and retaining more women officers and staff. With this comes the change in the age profile; this is due tomore family friendly policies, flexible working and career breaks. Additionally for police staff there are changes to pension qualification and the introduction of age discrimination legislation.

Women's risks at work have been traditionally ignored by the research community. Occupational health and safety has largely treated women as if they were the same as men, however,whilst women's bodies do not radically differ fromthose ofmen in their reaction to workplace hazards, there are physiological differences betweenmen and women which do have implications for health and safety at work.

Women are likely to experience at least one or two of a range of health complaints specific to women such as thrush, cystitis,menstrual problems, cervical cancer, problems relating to themenopause such as osteoporosis and problems linked to pregnancy at some time in their working lives.

The leaflet has been produced by the Police Federation of England and Wales and the British Association forWomen in Policing (BAWP) to provide useful information to all female police officers, police staff,managers and safety representatives. It highlights how health and safety legislation should be used to reduce the risk of injury and ill health to all women. A healthy police service is a productive service. The management of Health and Safety at work regulations 1999, clarify how employers must comply with their duty under this Act.A key requirement of which is that employers carry out a risk assessment of all hazards in the workplace. This should include women.

To see a pdf copy of the leaflet, click on the link below;