How easy is it to become an ag leader as a woman?
© Fotografixx/Istockphoto Agriculture has made great strides in recent years when it comes to female representation in leadership roles, with several notable women holding the top spots in commercial and political farming organisations.
But there is still a very long way to go to achieve parity on this front, given that there are many more men in these positions than women.
This has led to concerns about a lack of visible role models to inspire the younger generation.
See also: Find all our Level the Field campaign material in one place
“There’s the phrase ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’,” says Diana Overton, deputy managing director at Frontier, the UK’s leading crop production and grain marketing business.
“I don’t think that phrase rings true for everybody, but it’s an awful lot easier to go after something if you’ve seen an example of how it might work.”
Diana also suggests this lack of visibility feeds into a perception that women in agriculture tend to do the “back-office roles”.
“I’ve not been on the receiving end of a lot of negativity as a woman in agriculture, which is a fantastic thing to say.
“However, at events, there’s definitely an initial assumption quite often that the women in the room will be in the back-office roles,” she says.
“When that assumption is corrected, the majority of times, people around the table are fully supportive. But those biases are frustrating and I know a lot of my female colleagues find them frustrating as well.”
Union ladder
Minette Batters, former NFU president and the most well-known female face in farming, faced her share of challenges when working her way up the union ladder.
“When I stood to be president, I remember some farmers at a meeting in London coming up and saying ‘you really shouldn’t be doing this.
“You’re a small farmer and you’re a tenant farmer and you’re not going to command the respect that a man does. People are used to a man’s voice’,” she recalls.
On another occasion, at an NFU meeting in the North East, Minette challenged a man in the front row who had been shaking his head the whole 20 minutes she was speaking.
“I was told he wasn’t shaking his head at what I was saying, but the fact that a woman was saying it. I can’t tell you how determined I was not to fail because of those early criticisms,” she says.
“But then, at the end when I left, people were saying, ‘of course it’s so much easier for you being a woman’.”
Unwanted advances
Vet Sara Perez, clinical director at Poultry Health Services, which has won awards for the steps it has taken to support female staff, has been subjected numerous times to unwanted advances from clients on farm.
And members of her workforce – who are predominantly female – have faced other difficult situations.
One vet who was taking a shower on a high biosecurity farm had a farmworker attempt to break into the room. He was subsequently sacked when the incident was reported.
“Imagine yourself in the middle of nowhere, naked, then somebody tries to get into the shower room,” says Sara.
“That leaves you with insecurity and not wanting to be on your own, and as vets we are on our own a lot, going to emergencies at night.
“The excuse is always ‘it’s a joke, you cannot take a joke’, but to me, there is a line and this crossed it.”
It is these kinds of experiences that led Sara to take measures to develop her female staff.
Mothers returning to work after maternity leave are offered part-time and flexible working, refresher clinical sessions, and regular keeping in touch days. Single mums are also able to access help from a hardship fund.
Perseverance pays
For Frontier’s Diana Overton, the key to ensuring more women get into positions of leadership and influence in agriculture is to keep working on the issue.
“It’s not easy in terms of juggling family responsibilities with customer requirements and avoiding quotas,” she said.
“But we need everyone who is able to influence or lead to keep pushing things forward by considering different ways of working and new ideas that might help build a little bit more momentum.”
Combining career development with childcare
Commitment to childcare has been cited as the biggest obstacle to career progression for women, identified as such by 75% of the women who responded to Farmers Weekly’s Level The Field survey earlier this year.
Clare Otridge, director of Grounded Research and a member of the Women in Food and Farming Network steering group, suggested having children is a time burden that mostly falls on the woman, which is why they don’t tend to progress upwards in the same way as men.
“You see a lot of mirroring of careers between men and women working in the sector up until their mid-20s. But things change in the mid-30s when they might decide to have a family,” she says.
Country Land and Business Association president Victoria Vyvyan agrees that becoming a parent can stop women thinking they have time to focus on their career, but adds:
“We need to explain to people that you have got time and actually you will be energised by doing this additional thing.
“It’s not something that you haven’t got time for, it’s something that will be great.”
Abi Reader, deputy president at NFU Cymru, believes more could be done to accommodate women across the industry by having creches for children at events and holding meetings at different times of the day.
“Hopefully, somewhere along the line, this will strike a balance for people who’ve got different challenges,” she said.
Women in farming organisations
In the NFU in England and Wales, while high-profile figures such as Minette Batters and Abi Reader have used informal mechanisms to encourage women to stand for certain roles, there has been resistance to introducing anything akin to quotas for sector boards.
Many women do not want to feel they have been appointed to a role on anything other than merit – a sentiment that those on NFU council shared.
But Minette admits to feeling disappointed that only one woman – Rachel Hallos – put her name forward to become an officeholder following her own departure earlier this year.
“Balance is absolutely key and being the first woman that came in did change the discussions we had,” she says.
“I hope we’ll see a lot more come forward in the years to come.”
At the CLA, as well as encouraging the in-house women’s network, president Victoria Vyvyan has focused on ensuring there is a better gender balance on grassroots committees, and giving women and men the tools to be good committee members and chairmen and chairwomen.
“We’re doing much more on how to be a great chair,” she says.
“We look at how you actively notice who you’re not hearing from and bring them into the conversation.
“People are there because they’ve got something to say, but perhaps they feel discouraged or embarrassed, or they’ve never been in that situation before.
“That naturally brings people to become chairs of committees and to come onto our national committees and into the steps towards being one of the officers.
“You’ve got to be very conscientious about making sure you’ve got the right people at the top, but it’s about the feed, too.”
Level The Field
Huge strides forward have already been made for women in farming over the past few decades, but problems still remain, such as:
- Low land ownership rates among women
- Resulting difficulty in accessing private finance or government support
- Difficulties in using equipment/work clothing/on-site facilities designed for men
- Lack of access to flexible working for childcare or other family needs
- Low representation in representative farming organisations at the highest levels
- Being overlooked for succession
- Being subjected to prejudice either on farm or at farming events
- Level the Field will seek to shine a light on these problems and offer solutions to them.
The main part of the campaign will centre on practical support for farm business owners – both men and women.
See more on our Level the Field page.