Women & Farming

It is generally accepted that that women were responsible for the development of agriculture. The earliest evidences of agricultural development and female deities were found in Mesopotamia and date back 10,000 years. It is a heritage seemingly forgotten in light of the current demographics of land-based industries. According to LANTRA (UK sector skills council for land-based and environmental industries) men make up 50% - 80% of land-based workers.  

 That up to 80% of British farms are farmed by men is, however, only a partial perspective.  Women co-farm the majority of farms but their contribution is often obscured and denigrated under the identity of ‘farm-wife’ or ‘help-meet’. A dichotomy exists between farming and the farm family and traditional gender roles are reinforced by women’s role being confined to the latter. Women seldom claim inheritance to the land they work, and they are under-represented in farming organisations. In short, women do not generally farm in their own right, or with equal rights, but they do farm.  Rural sociologists have identified five, key ways that farming is gendered:

1. Males and females undertake different tasks on family farms; men are largely responsible for physical work and women for domestic, book-keeping and 'go-fering'.
2. Men's work has higher status than women's work.
3. Men usually determine what work women will and will not be involved in.
4. The work undertaken by men is most closely associated with the identity of 'farmer'.
5.  The conflation of the identity of farmer with men is reinforced by men's dominance of the resources of the agricultural sector - on-farm decision-making roles, ownership of land and positions of leadership in agri-political groups.

Describing farming as "a bit of a boys club" LANTRA seeks to redress the balance through its 'Women and Work' project.  By granting a sum of money to women employees towards the cost of training courses that might have proved too costly in the past, LANTRA seeks to help close the gender gap. Since 2006 4,000 women have participated with the programme and it is currently oversubscribed. LANTRA's positive discrimination around funding allocation is welcome and I hope that they will go further and critically engage with women's missing voice in agri-political organisations as well as challenge patrilineal inheritance.

Farming is changing. The average British farm is owned by a 59 year old man who often has no male heir to continue the family farm.  Multiple farming crises including isolation and increasing rates of depression combine to make his situation socially and economically fragile. These conditions necessitate widespread change.  This might involve a move towards co-operative owned farms and diversified land enterprises that spread the risks associated with fluctuating markets.  It also represents a real chance to challenge socio-political norms across land-based industries. Moreover, circumstances are ripe for  women to re-claim their agricultural heritage, to enter farming in their own right and work alongside male counterparts to transform gendered relationships with the land.