I often imagined that the riskiest jobs for women were the ones in dangerous fields like mining, logging, or deep-sea crabbing like those guys in “Deadliest Catch.” It turns out, there’s a whole different layer of risk that women face in some professions that you'd never expect. It’s not just about physical hazards—there’s also a whole lot of gender bias, harassment, and lack of proper accommodation in standardly male dominated industries (And yes, these can pose even more of a threat than hauling up a giant steel cage filled with crabs out of an ice-capped ocean.) 

Teacher 

Growing up, half of the girls in my grade wanted to graduate and become a teacher and for valid reasons. Teaching might seem like a safe, if not particularly exciting, job. However, it does come with its own set of dangers, especially for women. Teachers can deal with aggressive students and, sometimes even their parents.  

The American Psychological Association reported in 2022 that approximately 7% of teachers in the United States are threatened with injury each year. These threats are more prevalent in high schools, and female teachers receive more than twice as many threats as male teachers. For women especially, these risks are often higher.  

On top of that, the stress and emotional workload can lead to burnout, which is another serious health concern seen more prominently in the “feminine” fields of work. 

Sarah Morris, a middle school French teacher puts it into perspective and says, “The stress can be overwhelming. You’re not just managing a classroom— you’re also handling a lot of emotional work that doesn’t always get recognized.” So, while it might seem like a cushy job, teaching can be surprisingly tough. 

To add to the emotional burden, in 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed students and found that nearly 13% of the students surveyed admitted to carrying a gun, knife or other weapon on school property during the last 30 days. This increases the risk for physical violence and is potentially the most dangerous of classroom hazards.  

Medical Professionals 

The other day, my best friend Facetimed me to tell me about something crazy that happened at work. She’s an Emergency Room bedside doctor in Miami, so I knew that this was going to be a wild story. 

“We brought in a guy last night who had a few broken ribs from driving his car into a guard rail, but he must have been on something because he wouldn’t let us do our intake. He was screaming and swearing and spitting at us, so he needed to be restrained. But then after Pauline (one of the night nurses) went to give him a sedative, he snapped his restraint, grabbed the needle from her, and stabbed her with it. So now she’s getting bloodwork done in case he was carrying anything.” 

I was floored at how casually she told me this.  

“That’s so scary!” I had expressed. But she shrugged it off.  

“Eh. It comes with the territory.” 

Historically, nursing has been predominantly dominated by women. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the number of men in the field started to rise. Still to this day, 87% of nurses are women.  

Nursing is one of those jobs where you expect some risks—think exposure to diseases and long, tiring hours. You also risk getting stuck with a used needle, like my friend’s coworker, plus many other kinds of bodily injuries. I’ve heard countless stories from nurses and doctors describing violent patients and the havoc they cause in the hospital.  

Mistakes mean endangering someone’s life, so the mental pressure is probably the biggest burden. It’s clear that nursing isn’t for the faint-hearted, especially for women. 

Electrician 

If you’ve read our “Women in the Built Environment” blog, then you’re already privy to the struggles that women face in the electrical field. This industry is already known for being dangerous—it's been listed as one of the top 10 most dangerous jobs for years. But for women in the trade, there is more on the line. 

Yes, the job involves heavy lifting and working in all kinds of awkward positions, so it would be hard on anyone. But women in the field often face doubts about their skills, stemming from misogyny in the industry.  

Jessica Diaz, a licensed electrician in the r/linemen subreddit, shares, “Being a female electrician means proving yourself all the time. The physical demands are tough, and sometimes you feel like you have to work three times as hard as the men just to be taken seriously.” She goes on to explain that her first year as an apprentice her boss wouldn’t assign her to jobs that he deemed “too hard” for her and instead made her spot his ladder and hand him his tools on the jobsites.

She also explains that navigating the harassment from her coworkers was a daily struggle. There also aren’t bathroom accommodations for women on job sites that are stereotypically male.  

“I had to use the gas station across the street until they installed a “women’s only” porta-potty. Even after that, the men on my site were constantly vandalizing it or throwing my tools into the septic tank in some kind of protest of me being there,” Diaz says. For whatever reason, many old-fashioned electricians are not thrilled to have women joining the field, which breeds an unsafe environment for those who stick around. 

Law Enforcement 

Officers of the law are faced with dangerous situations regularly, but female officers also navigate a world beyond the field work that can be hostile and discriminatory. Sexual harassment and a lack of support can make the job even tougher. 

All too often when a case is reported and subsequently “resolved” (either after settlement or verdict) there is often no substantial change in the culture of the precinct that fostered the sexual harassment. Similarly, there is usually very little negative impact upon the offending officer. A survey of policewomen from 35 states uncovered that 77% of female officers have been a victim of sexual harassment by a male colleague at least once in their career.  

“It’s more than the physical stuff—the name calling the touching...I can tolerate that, even if I shouldn’t have to,” an anonymous female officer in New York says in an interview with NBC. “But a few months ago, one of my superior officers hacked into my Snapchat account and sent himself all of my private, intimate photos. He then sent them to a bunch of my colleagues and even our commander. It was humiliating and after filing a report, I was the one who eventually ended up getting transferred for ‘causing problems within my squad’.”  

Some of the women who tried to file complaints with internal investigators said their allegations were never documented or probed. Others said that after they filed internal reports, the information spread to other officers. Some said that when they told their superiors about sexual misconduct, they were warned to stay quiet. 

Military 

Similarly to Law enforcement, the military is well-known for its tough conditions, specifically for women, apart from the dangers of combat. But they also deal with issues like sexual harassment and the added pressure of overcoming institutional barriers. It’s a challenging environment both physically and emotionally. 

Imagine walking into a workplace where the risk of being harassed (or far worse) by a colleague or superior is alarmingly high. According to a recent poll by Smithsonian magazine, 67% of women in the U.S. military report having been sexually harassed or assaulted. 

That's the unfortunate reality for many women in the armed forces. Additionally, when a woman reports these kinds of incidents, she is often the one who faces severe repercussions. Not only does she have to endure the emotional toll of what happened, but she might also face retaliation or skepticism from her peers and superiors. Reporting a fellow officer can make her the target of additional harassment and can isolate her from her team, who might view her as a troublemaker or a liability.  

It’s a harsh reality that makes the military a particularly difficult and place for women to navigate, even in non-combat situations.  

Social Worker 

There is an alarming gender gap in the social work field, with 81% of all social workers identifying as women and yet women are disproportionately underrepresented in social service administration, as the majority of legislators in the social work field are men. This is because in the early years of the social work becoming an established field, men were more likely to be paid professionals, while women were unpaid volunteers and thus were excluded from leadership positions.  

Social workers often find themselves in volatile environments and deal with challenging situations that take an emotional toll—in fact, it was listed in the top 5 most easily burnt-out careers. Many women who decide to follow this path often say that it is a thankless job and that the weight of their cases often comes home with them at the end of the day.  

Some of their cases also have the capacity to put their lives at risk as they can often be exposed to unstable family systems. One of my childhood friends, Rebecca Mellis, went on to become a social worker and told me about her struggles as a woman in the field. 

When I asked her about the specific dangers of her job, Dr. Mellis says, “I’ve been stabbed before,” She tried to laugh that off, and I could tell that it was probably not something she wanted me to feel bad about. “One of my patients had to be removed from her home in the middle of the night and her mother wasn’t particularly happy about that. She stabbed me twice—once in my shoulder and once in my bicep. Luckily, there are always police officers present during these interactions, and she was apprehended. I was more heartbroken than scared, now that I think back on it. I did my job. That job just happens to put me at a greater risk of being stabbed by angry parents.  

High Risk, High Reward 

While many of these jobs are inherently risky, women often face additional challenges that go beyond the physical dangers that most men don’t have to consider. Gender bias, harassment, and lack of proper accommodations in some industries can make these roles particularly tough for the women who push through the mess to follow their chosen career paths.  

So many of the jobs on this list are incredibly rewarding, regardless of the challenges. Women have held these risky positions for decades, but it’s about time that we take further action to keep them safe. Understanding and addressing these issues is the only way to start creating safer and more supportive work environments where women feel included and secure.