Women Keep Canada's Production Lines Running

Walk the floor of a food processing plant in Canada and look at who's actually doing the work — trimming, sorting, packing, running machines. Chances are good it's a woman. Food manufacturing is one of the few corners of Canadian industry where women aren't a small minority. And yet the work gloves in the supply cabinet were almost certainly patterned for a man's hand.

We covered the farm side of this problem in our last issue. This one is about what happens after the harvest — in the plants, packing lines, and production floors that turn raw product into everything on our shelves.

Manufacturing is a bigger part of Canada than most people think

• Manufacturing employs about 1.7 million people across Canada — roughly 9% of the country's entire labour force.
• Food and beverage processing alone employs more than 270,000 Canadians, making it one of the largest manufacturing employers in the country. (Food Processing Skills Canada)
• The sector is hungry for workers: food and beverage processing carries a 3.8% job vacancy rate, higher than manufacturing overall, and about a quarter of its workforce is eligible to retire within ten years.

In other words, these plants need every skilled pair of hands they can get — and increasingly, those hands belong to women.

Where women actually work in manufacturing

Across all of Canadian manufacturing, women hold only about 29% of jobs — a share that has barely moved in 40 years, according to Statistics Canada data cited by Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters. CME considers this such a problem that it launched an initiative to add 100,000 more women to manufacturing by 2030.

But zoom in on food, and the picture changes completely:

• Nationally, 41.1% of people employed in food processing are women (2021 Census data via Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada).
• In Ontario — home to over a third of Canada's food, beverage and tobacco manufacturing jobs — women make up 44.4% of that subsector's workforce, compared to just 30.9% of manufacturing overall. (Job Bank sectoral profile, 2023)
• In some production roles, women are the majority: 53% of labourers in food and beverage processing in Ontario are women.

So while manufacturing as a whole is still catching up, food manufacturing is already close to half women. These are the people running the cutting, trimming, and packaging lines every single day.

The hand injury problem on the production floor

Manufacturing work is hand work, and the injury data shows it:

• In food industry settings, cuts, lacerations, and punctures are the single largest injury category at 15% of cases, ahead of sprains, burns, and fractures.
• Food manufacturing consistently posts injury rates above the all-industry average, driven by contact with equipment, cutting tools, and repetitive high-speed work.
• WorkSafeBC data shows manufacturing (including food processing) in British Columbia had a serious injury rate 44% higher than the provincial average from 2020 to 2024.

And here's the stat that should end every "gloves are optional" conversation: a BLS study found that 70% of workers who suffered hand injuries weren't wearing gloves at all — and the other 30% were wearing the wrong glove or one in poor condition.

Now put those two facts together

Women are nearly half the food manufacturing workforce. Hand injuries are largely preventable with gloves that fit and are rated for the job.

The consequences show up in the injury data. A study of 24,000 aluminum manufacturing workers — one of the largest of its kind, and one that carefully controlled for job type — found that women faced a 58% higher risk of workplace injury than men doing the same jobs. Researchers point to equipment and PPE designed around male bodies as one of the structural reasons.

The fit research we cited in our farm article applies just as hard indoors:

• A CSA Group report found half of Canadian women say their PPE doesn't fit properly, 43% find it uncomfortable, and 35% say women-specific options aren't even available.
• An Institute for Women's Policy Research survey found only 19% of tradeswomen were always provided properly fitting PPE, and nearly 40% attributed an injury or near-miss to ill-fitting equipment.

On a production line, an oversized glove is its own hazard. Loose fingertips get caught in rollers, conveyors, and guards. Excess material around the palm ruins grip on knives and tools — a real problem when you're making the same cut hundreds of times an hour. Bulky gloves reduce the dexterity that packing and trimming work demands, so workers pull them off to keep pace. And a bare hand next to a blade or a pinch point is exactly how a shift ends in the first aid room.

Gloves that fit the hands doing the work

This is the gap Spectra Supply exists to close.

The Women's Rockette Patterned specifically for women's hands (sizes 4/XS through 7/L), it's built from an HPPE/polyethylene blend with HyPro® fiber delivering ANSI Cut Level A6 protection — with abrasion level 6 and puncture level 4 behind it. That's serious blade-and-sharp-edge protection for cutting, trimming, and fabrication work. The PU-dipped fingers and palms give a secure, non-slip grip that's also food-safe, making the Rockette equally at home on a food-handling line as in an industrial plant. Lightweight, breathable, and form-fitting, it's protection workers will actually keep on for a full shift.

The Women's Rosie Covers the general-duty side of plant work: material handling, warehousing, shipping and receiving, maintenance. Premium goatskin leather delivers softness, flexibility, and abrasion resistance without the stiffness of heavier gloves, and it's cut for women's hands from the start in sizes XS through L. The microfiber touchscreen-friendly finger works with the scanners, tablets, and screens that run a modern floor, and the nylon pull tab makes on and off quick between tasks.

For safety managers: three questions worth asking

1. Does your PPE program stock women's-fit gloves — or just small men's gloves? They are not the same thing, and your injury log may already be telling you that.
2. Are your gloves rated for your actual hazards? A cut-level A6 glove where blades are involved isn't overkill; it's the baseline.
3. Are workers taking gloves off to do the job? If yes, that's a fit and comfort problem — and it's fixable.

Nearly half the people feeding Canada from the production side are women. Protecting their hands starts with gear that was actually made for them.

Every Spectra Supply purchase supports our #GlovesForGood mission — including the Spectra Women In Trades Scholarship Fund, helping more women build strong futures in trades and manufacturing. B2B and wholesale inquiries welcome through our Wholesale Partner program. Work protected. Work empowered.

Sources: Statistics Canada / Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (women in manufacturing workforce data); Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2021 Census (women in food processing); Government of Canada Job Bank, Food, Beverage and Tobacco Product Manufacturing Sectoral Profile — Ontario (2023); Food Processing Skills Canada, industry fast facts; WorkSafeBC manufacturing injury data (2020–2024); Occupational & Environmental Medicine, injury risk by sex in aluminum manufacturing cohort study; CSA Group, Canadian Women's Experiences with Personal Protective Equipment in the Workplace; Institute for Women's Policy Research tradeswomen PPE survey.