By Headlines Team 
Women represent 47% of the U.S. private-industry workforce, yet they account for 67% of all workplace violence injuries, according to a new report from DeMayo Law Offices examining occupational assault data from 2023 and 2024. Far from a statistical anomaly, researchers say the gap reflects the predictable outcome of a labor market in which women are disproportionately concentrated in the specific industries, roles, and environments that carry the highest risk of on-the-job violence.
Healthcare and social assistance illustrates the pattern clearly. It is the most dangerous industry in the country for workplace violence, recording 17.1 assault cases per 10,000 full-time equivalent workers, and it employs a workforce that is approximately 78% female. Educational services, the second most dangerous industry at 8.4 cases per 10,000, is roughly 69% female. In both sectors, the report notes, the industries with the largest female workforces are also the industries absorbing the largest share of the country’s workplace violence toll.
The injuries associated with these assaults are wide-ranging. Of the 77,780 total workplace violence incidents recorded during the period, sprains and strains accounted for 24% of cases, bruises and contusions for 21%, and cuts and lacerations for roughly 6.5%. Fractures made up a smaller share, about 3.7% of cases, but often carry outsized consequences, including extended recovery time and significant lost income, particularly for lower-wage workers. The overwhelming majority of these injuries, roughly 94%, resulted directly from hitting, kicking, or beating by another person, with the largest single share occurring while workers were actively providing medical or custodial care. A smaller number of cases involved stabbings, shootings, and strangulation, incidents severe enough to end or permanently alter a worker’s life.
The consequences extend well beyond the physical. In healthcare and social assistance, the report found that 60% of workers reported experiencing depression and 81% reported burnout, with nearly two in five saying they had considered leaving their positions specifically because of workplace violence exposure. In educational services, 60% of K-12 educators reported burnout, 20% were absent from their roles in 2023 due to burnout, and 7% resigned entirely during the 2023-2024 school year, outcomes concentrated in a workforce that is, again, predominantly female.
Retail trade, while not majority-female to the same degree, tells a related story: 35% of retail workers said they felt unsafe at work in 2024, up from 27% the year before, with one in four saying they had considered leaving their job specifically over personal safety concerns. Across the industries studied, the report found that women are not only more frequently injured, but are concentrated in roles where employer protections remain the weakest.
Despite bearing a disproportionate share of both the physical risk and its downstream toll, neither healthcare nor education is currently subject to a mandatory federal workplace violence prevention standard. Both remain governed by the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s decades-old General Duty Clause, a broad provision that imposes no specific training, planning, or risk assessment requirements on employers. Only California has enacted a binding statewide requirement, Senate Bill 553, effective since July 2024, leaving the vast majority of the country’s female-dominated, high-risk workforce without a comparable legal safeguard.
“Behind every workplace violence case is a real person: a nursing assistant struck by a patient, a retail worker threatened by an irate customer, a teacher corralling a volatile classroom,” said a spokesperson for DeMayo Law Offices. “These workers are asking for no more than to go to work and come home safely, and right now, too many of them aren’t getting that guarantee.”
The report’s authors argue that until regulatory frameworks account for the gendered nature of occupational violence, women will continue to face a disproportionate share of the country’s workplace injury burden, largely without dedicated protections designed around the industries where they are most concentrated.
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