Grant: Chair: Gender, Work and Health - Muscle and bone

Problems with bones, muscles, joints and other tissues that make up our musculoskeletal (MSK) system can be affected by activities that we do at work or home. Painful MSK problems can make work difficult and affect our overall health. The tasks we do at work can cause or aggravate these problems. Women and men are very different when it comes to developing these problems or recovering from them. Women tend to have MSK problems more often, and can have more difficulty returning to their normal work activities. We are not sure if this is because of biological differences between men and women; or because men and women tend to have very different work and life roles. It may be a combination of these factors. Women's muscles, bones and joints are different and exposed to different hormonal influences. Women usually have different roles at work and at home, than men. These can involve different stresses like posture and repetitive activity. Workplace relationships, lack of control of work tasks or environment, and family life balances can also affect these problems. Jobs that women perform are often different than men-sometimes even with the same job title. Women perform more unpaid work roles caring for others. Unfortunately, there are not many researchers who study how work affects health differently between men and women. The purpose of this chair is to dedicate a researcher's time and attention to answering questions about how men and women are different in terms of developing and recovering from MSK health problems. The researcher will also train a new generation of researchers to increase the number of people and research directions that focus on solving these problems. The chair will develop new research teams, develops new tools for measuring symptoms and work problems, determine how differences in work tasks and environments affect men and women, and develop strategies for care to be more sensitive to these differences in the future.