Launch of the Gender, Work and Health Chair Program

Work is an inextricable part of life—be it paid employment, or unpaid work such as caregiving. Gender and sex influence how we define jobs and divide work, whether worksites and equipment are physically suited to women and men’s bodies, and how risks such as occupational exposures affect workers who may vary by gender, sex or related characteristics such as body size, body fat levels, reproductive status or hormone levels.

The Institute of Gender and Health and its partners the CIHR Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis, the CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health, the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety and the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail are pleased to launch a five‐year Research Chair program in gender, work and health with a total investment of $7.2 million, including a nearly $5 million investment by IGH.

“The Gender, Work and Health Chair Program represents a major initiative to directly advance our Institute’s strategic direction on “work and health: research into action.” Work and health is a field that does not traditionally align with the mandates of any of the 13 CIHR Institutes, yet cross-cuts numerous research areas. Our aim for the Chair Program is to foster these intersections by encouraging work and health researchers to use sex and gender to advance to their programs of research, and gender and health researchers to expand into the area of work and health,” says IGH Scientific Director Dr. Joy Johnson.  

The Chair program will support a multidisciplinary group of leading researchers to develop their programs of research in gender, work and health, build capacity for research on work and health that accounts for gender and sex, and foster the translation of that research into gender- and sex-sensitive policies and interventions that improve workers’ health. Each award is valued at $800,000 ($160,000 per year for up to five years, with $60,000 of these funds being annually devoted to knowledge translation (KT) and training).

A unique feature of this Chair Program is a KT partnership with the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS), a not-for-profit federal department corporation mandated to promote the total well-being of working Canadians. CCOHS will be the official KT Partner for the Gender, Work and Health Chairs. Using web-based technology and their extensive network, CCOHS will expand the reach and impact of the Chairs’ work.

For complete application details, please visit the Request for Applications.