"Hope in another direction": compensation for work-related illness among women, 1900-1960--Part II

Our plain-English summary of "Hope in another direction": compensation for work-related illness among women, 1900-1960--Part II, by A. Bale (Women & Health, 1989).

The study

• Author: A. Bale
• Journal: Women & Health
• Published: 1989;15(2):99-115
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Abstract

This article examines compensation for work-related illness among women in the first sixty years of the twentieth century. Its first part (Vol. 15, No. 1) discussed women's experience in the employers' liability system and their workers' compensation claims for poisonings. Part II in this issue examines compensation for infectious diseases, principally tuberculosis; litigation involving lung disease produced by beryllium and asbestos; and women's workers' compensation claims for illnesses involving a mental component.

In plain English

This article was Part II of a two-part history of how American women sought compensation for work-related illness from 1900 to 1960. It covered infectious diseases, mainly tuberculosis; litigation over beryllium and asbestos lung disease; and claims for conditions with a mental component. It was a legal history: it presented no original medical study and named no asbestos fiber types. On asbestos, it reported that in 1928 twelve workers, including four women, were compensated for asbestosis acquired at a Massachusetts brake lining plant. It described Anna Pirskowski's 1929 lawsuit against Johns-Manville, which was dismissed five years later. It also described a 1957 Johns-Manville discussion about a female employee who had not been told she had asbestosis. The article traced the legal obstacles faced by asbestosis claimants Mildred Yates in Georgia and Mamie Drake in South Carolina. Drake could recover at most $23.01 a week for at most 500 weeks; the article described her obstacles, not a final award. The author concluded that few claims were filed and even fewer were compensated. Because women earned lower wages, their awards were considerably below men's for the same disabilities.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Historical and legal review (narrative history of court cases and compensation claims); Part II of a two-part article
• Who was studied: American women workers (and some family and community members) who brought workers' compensation claims or lawsuits for work-related illness, 1900-1960, described through individual cases
• Exposure: Varied: infections and tuberculosis at work; asbestos in a brake lining plant and the asbestos textile industry (fiber type not stated); beryllium in fluorescent lamp manufacturing and from a beryllium plant; work accidents leading to mental conditions
• Main results:
  • In 1928, twelve workers, four of them women, received compensation for asbestosis acquired at a Massachusetts brake lining plant of the Multibestos Corporation
  • Anna Pirskowski filed what the author called the first lawsuit against an asbestos company in 1929, alleging a malignant disease from her Johns-Manville employment; her claim was dismissed five years later
  • Lawsuits were brought in the 1930s against the southern asbestos textile industry, where perhaps one-fourth of the workforce was female
  • At a 1957 Johns-Manville compensation committee meeting, company medical officials discussed a 49-year-old female employee at the Manville, New Jersey plant who had not been told she had asbestosis
  • Mildred Yates, a 13-year spinner at a Georgia plant whose 1955 lung surgery showed asbestosis, had her case sent back to the compensation board four years after she last worked, to decide whether her disability was total
  • Mamie Drake, diagnosed with asbestosis in 1958 after thirty years at Raybestos-Manhattan in South Carolina, faced legal obstacles over the statute of limitations and notice requirements, for a maximum recovery of $23.01 a week for at most 500 weeks
  • The author stated that widows of insulation workers played a role in opening up asbestos product litigation in the 1970s
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that few claims were filed and even fewer were compensated. Because of women's lower wages, their awards were considerably below those of men with the same disabilities.

Related studies

• Women's occupation and cancer: preliminary analysis of cancer registrations in England and Wales, 1971-1990 — J. Simpson, E. Roman, et al. (1999)
• Asbestos disease and compensation — R.E. Sweeney, B. Castleman (1979)
• The American compensation phenomenon — A. Bale (1990)
• Asbestos-related occupational cancers compensated under the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance in Korea — Y.S. Ahn, S.K. Kang (2009)
• Workers' compensation for nonmalignant asbestos-related lung disease — C. Nevitt, W. Daniell, et al. (1994)
• A guide to compensation for asbestos-related diseases — M.G. Britton, D.T. Hughes, et al. (1981)

Browse return to medical research.