Occupational hazards and gender differences: a narrative review

Personalized medicine, and particularly gender medicine, is becoming essential in daily medical practice. This narrative review aims to assess sex and gender differences in occupational risks among workers. We point out that female workers are more exposed to biological risks (i.e., 70% of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic were women), but also seem to be more protected against microorganisms (i.e., for HBV vaccination: OR 1.21, p = 0.0023); with regard to physical risks, women are more susceptible to radiations (the estimated incidence of solid tumors for 0.1 Gy of exposure is 0.013% in females and 0.008% in males), while men are more susceptible to heat (infertility prevalence was 22.7% in exposed workers vs 3.0% in controls); female video terminal workers are more susceptible to both computer vision syndrome (aOR 2.57 and aOR 2.35) and musculoskeletal symptoms (OR 3.6). From a psychological point of view, women are more at risk for work-related stress and burnout, as well as workplace mobbing (65% of affected workers are women) and verbal violence, while physical violence was more common among men. In conclusion, important sex and gender differences are present with regard to occupational risks and hazards, thus showing the necessity to improve medical surveillance and to allow occupational physicians to personalize health surveillance.