Almost one in five women have safety concerns at work, which include the lack of workplace security, unrealistic workloads that affect health and wellbeing, poor air-conditioning, unsafe workplace design and unhygienic workplaces.
However, according to the annual CPSU What Women Want survey of almost 10,000 women, most women were not happy with management action on reported concerns.
"Easy public access to the workplace and inadequate security staffing were identified by women as problems. Open plan workplaces, when staff had to deal with clients who may be aggressive, were a particular concern," the survey report said.
Many women expressed concern about the state of workplace facilities, in particular poor air conditioning leading to illness, while many also commented on the unhygienic nature of their workplace.
Other concerns raised included unrealistic workloads leading to stress and fatigue, asbestos in buildings, manual handling concerns, inadequate general maintenance, general safety concerns from people working in or driving to remote or regional centres and bullying and harassment.
Fewer than half of the women who reported safety concerns were happy with the response and the survey report said "there is clearly a need for agencies to improve their response to health and safety concerns raised by employees".
The survey also found that more than a quarter of women have experienced bullying and harassment at work in the past year, and the most common form of bullying is being put down in front of others.
Direct supervisors are most often reported as the perpetrator of this type of bullying, and also common is being subjected to excessive criticism and being deliberately excluded from work social events/networks, according to the survey report.
Of those who have reported an instance of bullying, just 12 per cent were satisfied with the response of management, while the survey report also found that more than half of women say that they believe management does not place importance on eliminating bullying and harassment at work.