How to account for sex and gender in occupational health and safety research: are mixed methods the answer?

Abstract

OHS research has tended to measure the impact of occupational exposures and ergonomic interventions on male bodies and in a limited range of male-dominated occupations. To correct for this, researchers are encouraged to account for sex and gender in health research. It is not clear however how researchers should go about doing this. Taking OHS literature as a case study, in this paper, we argue that while mixed methods approaches alone do not produce analyses of sex or gender that move beyond reproducing binary comparisons or essentializing difference, combined with critical theoretical frameworks that engage in dialogic analysis, mixed methods have the potential to offer a complex and sophisticated understanding of the relationship between sex and/gender and OHS.