On the occasion of “Thinking about work” prize 2023organized by Sciences Po and The worldand which will be awarded on October 25, 2023, The world publishes interviews with the authors of the three finalist works: The second body by Karen Messing, Rushed work by Corinne Gaudart and Serge Volkoff and The care of things by Jérôme Denis and David Pontille.
In The second body, Canadian geneticist and ergonomist Karen Messing explores the consequences of biological differences between women and men on their working conditions. The work is based on a large number of field studies, carried out over several decades in North American companies in different sectors: poultry processing plant, call center, shelter for women victims of domestic violence …
Why did your thinking focus on the female body at work, and why qualify it as a “second body”?
Today, many researchers focus on gender, that is, the social norms that guide the behavior of women and men in society. I told myself that I needed to clearly explore these biological differences. Chronologically, we are the second body to arrive in most jobs. Which explains why in many cases, the workplace has been designed with men’s bodies in mind. For example, computer keyboards, at first, were a masculine tool…
And even today, many keyboards are not suitable for women’s hands which are smaller on average. Obviously, among men and women, there is a huge variation in biological parameters: when we talk about lack of adaptation, we are also talking about smaller men. All environments must adapt to all people who work.
Throughout the book, you emphasize the difficulty women have in exposing the inequalities they experience. For what ?
Women often don’t want to be identified as women. Especially in predominantly male environments where they are denigrated, because they are afraid of being even more so. However, our studies show that it is very satisfying to share our fears, our bad experiences, particularly of sexual harassment, to understand the mechanisms at work.
In France as in Quebec, the environments are not adapted to the massive arrival of women: however, they have many more musculoskeletal disorders, in particular. For a long time, they were told “it’s menopause” when they complained, but we are starting to realize that when we do a lot of small repetitive movements, which is more often the case for women, there is a physiological cost in the long run.
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