There are two stories here. Yes, the proportion of Canadian farm operators who are women has edged higher in recent years, but the total number of women who are farming is still on a downward trend, and is expected to keep on that trend unless and until numerous challenges are overcome.

Statistics Canada’s most recent census of agriculture showed women accounted for 28.7 per cent of all farm operators in 2016. That was up from 27.4 per cent in 2011, and from 25.3 per cent in 1996.

The number of women farming, however, actually fell.

And it may be even harder for women to farm as we get further into the 2020s.

The challenges remain

Pam Bailey, a co-founder and former chair of Ag Women Manitoba, points out high farmland prices make ownership a challenge for young farmers, and women in particular. 

Women were most prevalent among farm operators between the ages of 35 and 54 at 30.7 per cent in StatsCan’s 2016 census.

“If young farmers cannot own farmland, or even rent farmland — regardless of gender — then our rural communities and food systems will further suffer,” Bailey says.

But the hurdle can be even higher for women, Bailey says, because women face additional barriers including the gender wage gap, which also extends to the agricultural industry.

“Hence, if there is available farmland that can be accessed by a young farmer, a male young farmer will be not only more likely to have more wealth built up than his female equivalent, but have more leverage,” Bailey says.

Women also shoulder what she calls the “Mommy Tax,” meaning women face more wealth setbacks by just having children.

Additional uncertainties in the form of climatic challenges and the ongoing cost-price squeeze also make it harder for young farmers — who are more represented by women — to enter the ag industry, says Amber Fletcher, a University of Regina associate professor in the department of sociology and social studies.

“So gender and large political-economic factors intersect to create particular challenges for women in agriculture,” says Fletcher, who also co-authored a recent report prepared by Saskatchewan’s Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub. 

Between 1996 and 2016, says Cally Dhaliwal, an economist with the strategic policy branch at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the number of female farm operators declined by 20 per cent to 77,970, while the number of male operators declined by 33 per cent to 193,965. 

“As a result of the disproportionately smaller decline in number, the female proportion of all farm operators rose from 25 per cent to 29 per cent over that period,” she explains.

Who owns the land?

Federal statistics show, however, that farm women own less of the land they farm than male farmers. Men on average own over half the land they work. Women own just over one quarter.

In addition, few farms in Canada were solely owned by women. The 2016 census revealed 80 per cent of farms with women operators had two or more partners, and that independent women operators accounted for only 20 per cent of female operators. The proportion for independent males, however, was 50 per cent.

“As farms grow larger and require more capital, it may be even more difficult for women to become primary operators in the future,” said the Saskatchewan report, which examined the current status of women ag entrepreneurship in Saskatchewan in 2020.

The report claimed that also stymying women’s ownership is farm succession. The report and Bailey point out women don’t traditionally inherit farms.

Although some families have adapted to include all children in succession plans, the change hasn’t been universal, Bailey says. She’s personally seen capable women whose parents refused to see them as possible successors to their farm business.

“The fact that we still have that as a barrier is hard to believe, but it is a reality for far too many,” Bailey says

She predicts fewer women as primary farm operators “for the next while,” but adds this is intertwined with the fact the number of farms and farmers are in decline.

Gender roles 

The Saskatchewan report postulated men’s dominance in agriculture can at least be partly tied to gender roles on the farm. It said gender roles have positioned men as primary farm operators, with women as support labour.

The report found women most strongly involved in less visible operational tasks like farm management, marketing and accounting, whereas men’s most common jobs included seeding, spraying and combining.

But the report also found that gendered divisions of labour on the farm are weakening, and gender roles are changing.

“Men are becoming more involved in child care, while more women are performing traditionally masculine tasks, like operating equipment,” the report stated.

Julia Laforge, a post-doctoral fellow at Lakehead University, speculates the role that women play on farms “hasn’t changed that much, since women have always been involved in farm decision-making, accounting and labour.”

“What has changed are attitudes. Whereas that work would have been considered the job of the ‘farm wife’ and was considered unpaid labour in previous generations, now there is increasing recognition that this work is the same as their husbands’ and partners’, and therefore they are farmers as well,” Laforge says.

Iris Meck, founder of the Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference, and Glacier FarmMedia’s director of conferences, also believes women are receiving more recognition that they’re involved in every aspect of farming.

In the 1960s, her mother took care of the farm books, but also worked in the fields and looked after livestock. These days, technology has made it much easier to communicate what farm women are doing on the farm.

“All you have to do is go to any blog or social media platform, and you’ll see women in the combines, the tractors, looking after cattle, and livestock of all kinds,” says Meck. “We’re recognizing that they’re there, and they’ve always done everything.”

Opportunities

Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Peggy Brekveld predicts a continued decline of farmers across Canada, but a slow rise in women farmers, especially in regions that led the way with higher proportions of female operators.

British Columbia had the highest female proportion of farm operators in Canada at 38 per cent, followed by Alberta at 31 per cent, according to the 2016 census.

Women made up 29.7 per cent of Ontario farm operators in 2016, and Brekveld points out that while the number of farms in Ontario decreased by 13 per cent from 2006 to 2016, the number of farms with female operators increased by 12 per cent.

Laforge says her own research found that there is a growing number of young women farmers, especially on smaller, niche farms. They’re using direct marketing, including community-supported agriculture and farmers markets.

That aligns with the 2016 census, which reported female farm operators were more represented on farms specialized in serving niche markets, and on more diversified farms that produced a combination of products, such as fruits and vegetables, and/or poultry and eggs.

Interviews conducted for the Saskatchewan report supported the possibility that alternative forms of agriculture, such as organics and direct marketing, might provide a more inclusive environment for women in agriculture, says Fletcher.

“Due to the disproportionate financial barriers women experience getting into agriculture — which include the price of land but also the price of equipment and other inputs — less industrialized or less capital-intensive forms of agriculture might provide a more accessible route into the sector for women, or new farmers generally,” Fletcher says.

Role models

Brekveld thinks that positive examples will help bolster the number of women in farming.

“As young women see more role models who are succeeding in farming, on their own or in partnership with others, it becomes a natural career option to consider,” she says. The Saskatchewan report adds that role models and mentors can provide a crucial entry point into agriculture.

“Socialization is powerful: if young women are encouraged to enter the ag sector, they not only see it as a viable option, but learn important knowledge and skills along the way,” the report says.

Brekveld notes that support for farm women has grown, with farm magazines and social media outlets highlighting women in ag, and various groups providing networking opportunities.

Meck adds that after a couple of years of holding her conferences, she observed more articles about women in agriculture, including many more young women profiled in publications.

The report also highlighted emerging opportunities to help women in farming to access financing, mentoring, training and other support to build their businesses. Several programs offer support specifically for women entrepreneurs, such as Farm Credit Canada’s (FCC) loans for women ag entrepreneurs through its Women Entrepreneur Program.

Ongoing hurdles

Fletcher, however, says the report’s interview data revealed that sexism and stereotyping continue to exist for women in agriculture.

“There have been times where men have not wanted to deal with me because I’m a woman. ‘How could you possibly know as much as Joe about chemicals and cropping rotations and things like that?’” one interviewee said.

Others reported customers preferring to deal with the “man of the house,” and employees refusing to take direction from women.

“We need to ditch the stereotypes and include women — daughters, wives, daughters-in-law and sisters-in-law — in the conversation,” agrees Bailey.

She calls for major systemic changes that include gender pay equality in the agricultural industry, and rural child care that would allow for both partners to keep working.

“It would be nice to have a government program that supports women farmers specifically to address some of these major issues, but until these tremendously important barriers come down, it is only a band-aid solution.”

– This article was originally published in the April 2021 issue of Country Guide.

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“There are things like making sure that you have access to clothing that is for women, work boots that are for women and gloves that fit women’s hands,” says Jennifer Wright, acting executive director on the Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council. “These things are not always accessible or in stock … that’s an area that still continues to need improvement.”

In the bigger picture, too, access to rural daycare hampers many women from entering the farm workforce, especially since many jobs on the farm aren’t nine-to-five and may need more flexible daycare arrangements than many daycares provide.

“Not everybody has family to lean on in those cases,” Wright says.

Also on the topic of children, while parental leave is increasingly being taken by both women and men, there are still inequities in the workplace around maternity leave for women and even hiring decisions based on potential family responsibilities.
Will a female applicant think it’s smart to take a job with you?

“There may still be a bit of a bias when they are looking at hiring a woman about the potential for them to take time off for pregnancy, or having family responsibilities,” Wright says. “When hiring, they might not always be looking at the candidates equally.”

Opening the door to women

Ana Maria Ayala Arboleda knows what it’s like to be a female farm employee. She has worked in the swine industry in her native Colombia (where she trained as a veterinarian) and in Canada, and says that in the early days of her career she experienced skepticism in both countries about her ability to work in a traditionally male-dominated sector.

“When you went to a barn or to see a producer, they thought that you wouldn’t know how to handle a pig because you weren’t a man, and they assumed that you didn’t have any background (in the industry),” she says.

Ayala works for Hypor Inc. in Ituna, Sask. She had wanted to learn more about the production end of the pork sector when she heard about the job opportunity with the company and moved to Canada two years ago.

“They were looking for people to work in their nucleus barn, the largest pork barn, and I applied because I wanted to get in touch with the production and the animals … how do you handle them, their behaviour,” she says. “This is definitely an opportunity for me to get that extra knowledge and apply it in the future.”

With labour shortages in ag already well documented and getting worse, the assumption is that more farmers will want to hire more women like Ayala. But will they actually follow through?

With agriculture coming late to the party, it won’t always be easy. “We’ve got to a crisis point, but so have other industries, which has only increased the competition for a smaller labour pool,” Wright warns.

Even so, she’s optimistic. “We’ve seen more women entering the industry and now there’s even more opportunity.”

It’s also meant that employers are starting to be more open to trying new things and maybe even giving things they have tried in the past another chance.

“An employer might have an unconscious bias, or a conscious bias, about what a female employee might be able to do from a physical labour point of view,” Wright says. “But, when they are looking for an employee today, and have a female candidate that demonstrates that they can do the work, if they had that bias, they may think about ignoring it.”

Women more likely to apply

A lot has changed in terms of women’s roles in agriculture over the last 10 years, and a big shift has been that women see themselves as suited for all kinds of jobs that have always been thought of as the preserve of their male counterparts. As a result, they are more likely to apply for those jobs today than a few years ago, when they believed their application would get passed over for a male candidate.

“Whereas women may have thought they could do the work before, but they didn’t apply because they didn’t think they’d be looked at, now women, more and more, are applying for the jobs that they know they can do,” Wright says.

That doesn’t mean that women see themselves as necessarily doing a job in the same way as men, but they are more confident today that they can find solutions to ensure that they can do the job as well.

After starting out in the farrowing area, Ayala progressed to the nursery and now works in finishing with the largest animals and has never doubted her ability to master each role.

“I felt challenged at the beginning but now I feel that it’s just another experience,” she says. “You just need to be able to assess yourself, be resilient about the environment that you’re working in, and find your way to do things to achieve the outcome that is required.”

Gender gap still exists but is getting addressed

Ayala is fully aware of the gender gap that still exists in agriculture, but she feels it’s getting better and employment opportunities for women are going to continue to increase as women continue to demonstrate their value to the industry.

“Although women may be in lower positions, or their wages are not as good as men who are in higher positions sometimes, I feel that women push themselves harder to do the best job that they can,” says Ayala. “I don’t let (being a woman) be a limitation to try to get a higher position, because we, as women, will work to show that we have a lot of value. Women have to evaluate themselves, and believe that they do not have limitations. We are smart and good at troubleshooting, and this is where we can find good opportunities.”

Generational differences are also creating a shift in attitudes around gender and equity. Younger men and women coming into the ag workforce have far different attitudes and expectations than their parents or grandparents.

“We’ve seen a real shift, especially since the pandemic, where many people regardless of gender are looking at work in a different way, and they’re starting to look for better work/life balance,” Wright says. “Certainly, we’re seeing the younger generation of fathers, for example, wanting to take their parental leave and be part of the child care process. That’s had an impact because it’s not just about women; it’s more generational, and with a labour crisis hitting across many industries, it’s becoming harder for employers to ignore that.”

Job seekers in the driver’s seat

Job seekers are definitely in a strong negotiating position. “If there is a situation with an employer that isn’t going to meet what an employee is looking for, they know that they can move on,” Wright says. “Employers have to be more flexible and they are starting to work that way in all sorts of areas.”

That includes things like allowing employees (of any gender) to leave earlier or arrive later so they can pick up or drop off children at daycare, or making work shifts accommodate family situations.

“The employers that are looking at ways to make some accommodations are going to be the ones that will attract more people to come and work for them, and will have better retention in the future,” Wright says.

Valeska Ferl understands that dynamic well. Originally from Germany, for the past 10 years Ferl has worked at Halarda Farms Ltd. at Elm Creek, Man., one of Manitoba’s largest dairies that milks more than 1,200 cows a day. She does milking shifts but also helps in other areas, such as cow management and health. She believes that it doesn’t matter what gender you are; today you can get a job in agriculture if you are prepared to work hard.

“It depends what you are looking for,” she says. “But you have to be a flexible person. When I worked at the other farm, I did hiring interviews and from the employer’s side, it’s very hard to get reliable people.”

Women taking more training

Today, two-thirds of the people working in the barns at Halarda Farms Ltd. are female, a big change from 10 years ago.

It’s one more indication that more women are looking for and finding jobs in the industry and that they are taking the training they need to do the work.

“I know from my friends, even if they are operators on a grain farm, there are more and more women that are focused on education to be able to do those jobs as well,” Ferl says. “Everything is more open today. Nobody is looking at you and saying you can’t drive a tractor if you didn’t start doing that when you were 10 years old. If an employer says ‘can you handle the work we are asking you to do,’ and you say ‘yes’, it doesn’t matter what gender you are, you will get a chance to prove it because there is a need for people who are willing and able to work.”

That commitment to extra training is something Ferl believes in strongly. She has a Canadian class one driver’s licence, which she took initially to help out a friend working on a grain farm, but she also did it because sees it as a good job skill.

“I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it,” Ferl adds. “I like the idea of having an extra qualification … it opens up quite a few more job options.”

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This will almost certainly result in a continually growing percentage of visible minorities among Canada’s working age people over the next decade, similar to the trendlines in other western nations.

If you walk the grounds at a farm show, though, that diversity isn’t really very obvious. Nor is it something I’ve seen when meeting with marketing staff at any of the farm equipment brands — whether major or minor — on any continent.

But while visible minorities may not yet account for many of those brand staffers, I have noticed one significant demographic change over the years. Women are increasingly making up part of their executive teams.

That hasn’t occurred by accident. All the major brands are deliberately moving to increase diversity across their workforces, and getting women into leadership roles is one key target all have focused on. An excerpt from CNH Industrial’s report A Sustainable Year makes that pretty clear.

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“To establish a diverse, inclusive and attractive workplace well into the future,” it reads, “the company is carrying out initiatives that ensure women and minorities are represented in our talent pipeline, as well as increasing the number of women in leadership positions across the organization … The company is also creating region-specific initiatives that advance our (diversity and inclusion) efforts.”

Among those region-specific initiatives, the company’s Brazil operation has launched an effort to help lift women out of poverty by providing them with specific skills training that would allow them to fill positions at the assembly plant near Sao Paulo. The courses are held in the evenings to allow stay-at-home mothers to attend. The company also provides assistance such as transportation, meals and workwear for them. The aim is to help establish a skilled workforce that could raise the participation rate for women at the facility well above its current 15 per cent.

When it comes to broader goals, CNH has set itself a target of having at least 20 per cent of its leadership roles occupied by women as early as 2024.

Despite being well qualified for many corporate positions, especially highly technical ones such as engineers, AGCO’s Fendt brand has recognized that many women feel insecure in occupying positions in the traditionally male-dominated STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). To help prepare young women to deal with that insecurity, commonly called “imposter syndrome,” the company addressed it at a Female Career Day held at the Fendt facility in Germany in June. Ivory Harris, senior vice-president and chief human resources officer at AGCO, gave a speech on the topic. 

“Unfortunately, women are particularly likely to experience feelings of not deserving their success,” Harris said. “Self-doubt makes it difficult to recognize and appreciate their own accomplishments. The phenomenon of women feeling imposter syndrome more often than men can be exacerbated by women in first-time roles held by women, in what has been a traditionally male-dominated work environment, such as the STEM field. I’m passionate about empowering women at AGCO and encouraging talented female students, especially from the fields of math, computer science, science and technology.”

“The agricultural industry is changing,” adds Ingrid Bussjaeger-Martin, managing director for finance and IT at Fendt. “That makes the work very exciting. Producing food sustainably and innovatively for a growing world population presents us as agricultural machinery manufacturers with new challenges that we can only master together. I am delighted that so many young women are taking part in our Fendt Female Career Day today for the third time and are interested in a career in agricultural technology.”

That third seminar accommodated 50 young women looking to make a career in an agriculture-related field.

Over at John Deere, one woman is leading a unique effort to increase diversity in its workforce and she is doing it in a non-traditional location: urban Chicago. Brand ambassador for the company, Johanna Acevedo, spends much of her time in the former meat-packing district turned urban hub of Chicago, where farming isn’t likely top of mind for residents. She’s introducing skilled potential hires to an ag equipment industry they had no idea needed tech-savvy talent. In fact, Acevedo didn’t know that much about the company herself until she started working for Deere.

“When you live in a bigger city and there are no farms around you, John Deere is not one of the first companies that comes to mind,” she says. “And while I knew of John Deere, I definitely didn’t know John Deere was an opportunity for me to come and be in IT (information technology).”

As group engineering manager in Chicago where Deere is in the process of expanding its IT and technology footprint, first to 150 and ultimately to 300 people, Acevedo is the onsite leader responsible for “culture, hiring strategy and community outreach.” The brand’s office there is located in the same neighbourhood as Google and Facebook, which says a lot about the advanced state of modern ag equipment manufacturing today.

“A lot of people know John Deere for being a hard-iron manufacturing company,” Acevedo says. “So, I have this amazing opportunity to tell them that we also have an autonomous tractor, that we’ve had self-driving vehicles for 20 years, that we have one of the most accurate GPS systems on the market, and that we have the See and Spray Ultimate technology which uses really cool AI (artificial intelligence).”

Acevedo’s goal is to spread the message that the brand is determined to establish a culturally diverse workforce. And she’s working to make that happen sooner rather than later.

“Perhaps as a result of its presence in rural areas (which sometimes lack racial diversity), people of colour don’t always realize that John Deere is really interested in having diverse and inclusive teams,” Acevedo says. “I think (Deere’s new locations in) Chicago and Austin in particular are really great opportunities for us to show people of colour that we’re in this arena not just to play in the tech space, but because we want your diverse talent at our company. We want you to think of John Deere as an employer of choice.”

If finding and hiring a diverse group of employees is a challenge, however, so is retaining them after they’re on payroll.

“As a company and organization, we did a good job of bringing in diverse talent, but we weren’t always connecting and creating the environment and the culture where people felt comfortable staying,” says Leslee Hager, vice-president of internal audit at Deere.

But one of the company’s other departments has distinguished itself in leading the way in that effort. Deere’s accounting and finance arm had earned a reputation for being inclusive and diverse, and during a late 2020 roundtable discussion, Hager recalled a tipping point that motivated the team to raise the bar even higher.

“We were told, ‘No, this is not enough,’” she said. “One of the leaders said, ‘We need to take big action and we need to make sure all our leaders are engaged.’”

“Work streams” were created that focused on career development, diversity in leadership, recruiting and early career, culture and engagement, inclusivity conversations, and — linking them all — communication. Each work stream has “employee champions” who hold regular meetings and facilitate subgroups that meet more frequently to keep interaction topical, educational and engaging. Monthly meetings now typically include more than 500 employee participants.

There has been noticeable progress as a result. Three years ago, Deere found its percentage of women in middle-to-upper-level accounting and finance roles lagged behind its progress in lower-level positions. Now the percentage of mid-career roles held by women in Deere’s finance offices in the U.S. is increasing, and other departments are adopting the program in hopes of duplicating its success.

The job is to add diversity to the workforce and strengthen it as a cohesive, effective group, and Deere has learned this involves more than just going out and finding qualified women and people from ethnically diverse backgrounds. It means changing attitudes and biases among existing groups to create a welcoming atmosphere.

Deere’s Amy Wilson and Nicole Shearer co-operate on a “Perspectives” blog, which began as a look at being a woman at Deere and immediately earned a following. It has since grown in inclusion, encompassing everything from gender, religion, culture, race and dual-career dynamics. Since its February 2021 launch, the blog has generated and gathered dozens of submissions and posts. Many of the real-life stories share career issues and personal encounters.

“In almost every blog post we tried to include an action item because that’s ultimately the point,” says Shearer, manager of cash management. “We’re hoping that we can be a voice that encourages people to really think about something from a different perspective and then hopefully have the conversations, raise awareness, and, if it all goes well, change behaviours.”

The post The diversity gap appeared first on Country Guide.

Women fill all those roles and more, and almost without exception, they juggle that work with all the other balls of home and family. 

Farm women are raising kids, managing the household and caring for elderly parents in addition to everything else they do on and off the farm.

“Women are doing the invisible tasks in addition to the work that they ‘should be doing’ or are being paid for,” says Dr. Sonia K. Kang, associate professor of organizational behaviour and HR management at the University of Toronto. “There is so much unpaid labour that goes completely ignored.”

Which is not to say that men don’t juggle lots of balls themselves, but rarely do they have the same expectations as women, specifically when it comes to responsibilities related to the household and child care.

Given the uniqueness of the family farm, where home is also the business, and where there are inter-generational and family dynamics at play, the stereotypes and expectations can become amplified. That can lead women to feel overwhelmed, inadequate and unable to keep up, creating a vicious cycle of obligation, guilt, resentment, stress and anxiety that ultimately affects the whole family, and in many cases the farm itself.

“It’s very easy for people to fall into stereotypical domestic roles, which already happen in workplaces. For example, women will be the ones who clean the communal kitchen or make sure the coffee is refilled. Those kind of maintenance tasks tend to fall to women,” says Kang. “So, in a scenario where the workplace is your home and your colleagues are family members, it can exacerbate the thinking that women, especially, are expected to do that even more.”

What is women’s work?

Most people, though, assume these roles and expectations because of things like habit or tradition. They perpetuate stereotypes without consciously realizing they are doing so, and ultimately it causes tension and stress for men as well as women.

Kang and Dr. Joyce He, assistant professor at UCLA, have done some collaborative research that explores how men react to masculine language and male-dominated work environments.

There are new masculine ideals that men want for themselves, but on the farm they can feel it’s difficult to pursue them, Kang says. “There’s a lot of tension there, where men feel this pressure to be super-masculine and get things done … to be the person who’s running that farm and responsible for everyone else.”

What farms need to do to help overcome these issues is to assign roles based on skills and interests, not on gender, Kang suggests.

“It’s about being aware that biases might be filtering the path that people are taking, and (it’s about) making men aware that they’re trapped in this masculine world as well,” Kang says, and she sees many parallels between farming and other sectors based on foundations like asset ownership, male-hierarchies and roles that entrench gender bias. 

“Agriculture is tied to very traditional masculine attributes,” Kang says. “Having dominance over land is a male stereotypical thing, and interacting with markets, financial management and all of these different things already have the foundation as being a man’s world.”

Although it’s a broader problem, these gender issues are intensified on farms because, like many family businesses, there is a high level of reliance on the labour of everybody in the family.

“It runs into the general trouble in our society where we don’t count women’s household labour,” says Dr. Mara Fridell, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba. “The pandemic really showed the ways in which we overcount some very masculine work and undercount a lot of feminized work.”

Don’t turn women into men

When trying to advance in roles typically dominated by men, women often — and understandably — approach the barriers by feeling they have to prove they can do everything the men are doing. But the trouble is, if they do everything the men do, they’re actually doing more.

“Instead of trying to get women to turn into men, we need to really understand and see the value of the work that women are doing,” Kang says. And, she stresses, “If we put value on the tasks that women are doing then they are no longer invisible, those tasks rise to the surface, and that visibility has the potential of making sure that tasks are split more equitably.”

So although the phrase “fair isn’t necessarily equal” often gets applied to the farm transition process, it’s equally applicable to day-to-day operations. It takes account of the family situation of the people involved, and of the distribution of household and child-rearing responsibilities within those family structures.

Equity requires fairness and impartiality, but it’s also impossible if it doesn’t speak to value. Of course, not every job in society is compensated in the same way. Some roles require more education, skills or experience than others, which is reflected in the salary level. It’s a challenge on the farm, though, because there are so many different tasks and it’s so hard to compare them. 

It takes specialized knowledge to raise crops and livestock, to operate farm machinery and to do the marketing and manage the financials. Most of these jobs are compensated monetarily. But then there are also the less visible tasks that must be done if the farm is going to function, and many of them fall to women, such as making sure everyone is nourished every day, taking the kids to school or daycare, or being a full-time caregiver for pre-school children or elderly relatives.

How do we set it right?

So, how do you value the unpaid labour that women and other family members contribute to the farm and the household? Can it even be done?

It starts with identifying those tasks by making a list of them. “Be explicit about who is doing what,” Kang says. “Home-related tasks are much more likely to fall to women, without any recognition. The list allows you to not only identify things but to place value on them.”

Then look harder at those jobs. Although it’s tempting to assign roles according to stereotypes because it’s easier, doing that will hamper everyone’s ability to find the roles that they are best suited for and that will provide a better return for the farm business and the harmony of the household.

“It might be the case that men enjoy the tasks that women have been doing,” Kang says. “Because it’s not been seen as something that they should be doing, they have never tried them.”

‘Drop the ball’

Of course, women are often their own worst enemies, reluctant to seek change because they have been so deeply conditioned to believe that everything in the home is their responsibility.

American author and speaker, Tiffany Dufu agrees, and she has even coined a phrase for it: Home Control Disease.

“Most modern women scoff at the idea that a woman’s place is in the home,” Dufu says in her book, Drop the Ball: achieving More by Doing Less. “Yet, many women still focus obsessively on everything about it — how it’s organized, how it’s managed, and how the cooking, cleaning, and caretaking get done, down to the smallest detail … When it comes to our homes, many women feel a compulsive need to control, to make sure everything is managed in a particular way — our way.”

Dufu says women need to learn to “drop the ball,” focusing on what’s important and not feeling that they have to do it all if they want to achieve their true life’s purpose and be happy at work, at home and at play.

Dufu has had a successful, high-profile career in the non-profit sector and is an expert on women’s leadership, but she learned one of her most important lessons simply by observing other women that she admired.

“It occurred to me that women who are successful managers in the workplace abandon best professional practices at home,” Dufu says.

So, she went home and created an Excel spreadsheet. In the first column she made an exhaustive list of all the tasks she could think of that were required to manage the home she shared with her husband, Kojo, and her infant son, Kofi. In the three columns beside that list, she put the headings Kojo, Tiffany and No-one.

Next she populated the cells in her column with X’s against the tasks she currently performed, but when she got halfway through the list, she realized that “presenting my husband with a list of household duties that made it obvious how much more I did was not a winning strategy.”

So, she left the three columns completely blank and sat down instead with Kojo so they could begin to assign these tasks as a team. Before they began, she was surprised that Kojo wanted to add a bunch of items she hadn’t thought of (and some she hadn’t realised he was even doing or thought of as tasks essential to the household). As an example, he wrote down technology manager: “When have you ever programmed your phone or laptop”, and botanist: “The last time you watered a plant was in 1996 before we were even married. It was a cactus and it died.”

This is how the couple populated their list together, naming it their Management Excel List (MEL, for short). It was the dawn of a new era in their lives. MEL would prove to be the most useful tool the couple had for negotiating and tracking household responsibilities, but the most revealing part of the MEL exercise was deciding which tasks should go in the ‘No-one’ column. 

“This column represented our acknowledgement that there was more to running a household than both of us could ever accomplish,” Dufu says. “We would stop making assumptions about what the other person was doing — or should be doing – and we would not blame each other for what didn’t get done.”

To make it work, though, women have to take a hard look at their goals. “We worry that if things go wrong at home, it will mean we’ve failed as women, because society tells us that to be a successful woman, we need camera-ready kids and a spotless kitchen,” Dufu says. “At the same time, we’re not supposed to openly admit that we feel our success as women is connected to our success at home. That would make us weak, or at least old-fashioned.” 

The urge to micromanage

Jennifer Christie has never suffered from HCD.

“I lived on my own for so long, and I was so focused on my career that the other stuff wasn’t as important to me,” says Christie. “Things like what my house looked like when people came over was always of secondary importance to me. I never felt like my worth or my value was being judged on that. I was pursuing my career and pursuing the things that I felt were my strengths and was moving into my purpose.”

As founder of the Ag Women’s Network (AWN), Christie knows many women who do struggle with HDC. Any time AWN has held events, the topic of balancing career, family and home is always front and centre. “We really struggled because whenever we have someone speak about it, they always say the same thing,” Christie says. “There is no balance, you have to figure it out, but how?”

Christie says although she does believe that women and men of her generation are more likely to share responsibilities of the home and child care, women do have more of a tendency to micromanage the details of those tasks.

“Men are often not given the opportunity to do these things, and when they do, if it’s not perfect or the way we do it then it’s not good enough,” Christie says. “I feel that way in the workplace too when I try and delegate something.”

Christie admits that she is trying to learn how to delegate with a focus on the outcome rather than the way she thinks things should be done, a lesson that many women need to learn if they want to successfully “drop the ball” as Dufu advocates.

“A lot of it is about attitudes, being open to change, and not having a blind side that we don’t have to do it the way we always did it,” Christie says. “When I talk to people about this, a lot of people will try and guilt-shame women that they are still responsible for the home … we have to let people figure out what works best for them and their situation, and it may not be what has worked for others.”

That’s especially challenging in a family farm situation where there may be more than one generation involved.

“That’s where we get into a lot of tension in succession talks,” Christie says. “We get to a point where we keep doing the same things and we don’t really stop and say, is this actually serving the purpose that we had initially set out to serve or are we just stuck in the motions? In our relationships, how many of us have actually had a conversation about who is going to do what, what our purposes are and what we want? We aren’t intentional about those things.”

Dufu also suggests that one of the reasons women can be so controlling when it comes to the household is because it’s the only place that women are recognized as the authority, and Christie agrees. But networking may help.

The value of networking for women

Networking can be more important for women in agriculture than men because it gives them a chance to share their ideas and experiences, as well as to learn from each other and build a like-minded community of women not just in agriculture, but including other sectors too.

Kang sees this as well. “Now we have the opportunity to connect to people through social media … you can share your experiences but you can also share strategies and learn from each other,” Kang says. “Networking is even more important for women because they’re not in the old boys club network, they’re not going to be in the situations where they’re going to be introduced to other people.”

Life on the farm raises the stakes, though.

“It’s more important for rural women to organize than anyone, because they really are overwhelmed,” says Fridell. “Being able to work with other people effectively and efficiently, and to prioritize getting things done collectively — these are the sorts of problems that don’t get well managed by yourself in isolation. I think it’s crucial that rural women are networking and organizing.”

So if farm women are going to thrive, a lot is going to have to change, Fridell says. In particular, she says it’s important for the farm community to recognize that organizing groups that are going to be effective advocates and resources for women in agriculture takes real skill and commitment, and it needs to be driven. 

“You can’t just have a Facebook group and expect something to happen, especially when it’s being run by overwhelmed people,” Fridell says. “There are lots of skills that have been lost around how do you organize; just even how do you bring people together to prioritize working together.”

But agriculture needs to recognize there is a cost to not succeeding too, both across the industry and on individual farms. Success, says Fridell, will take “waking up the world to the unsustainability of the workload that these women are enduring.”

Talk it out

Farms in India are developing a better path for farm women to join the workforce. It could work in Canada too

A recent Canadian study in rural India has uncovered interesting insights into the participation of farm women in the work economy. The study suggests that a lot of our research into work-life balance hasn’t really understood the intricate household dynamics that are needed for women to pursue careers or paid work outside of the home.

Women’s participation in the workforce has stagnated in both the developed and developing world despite a plethora of programs aimed at supporting its growth.

In the United States, the rate of working-age women in the workforce is 57 per cent, a number that has barely changed in 30 years, while in India and China the number of women in the labour force has been dropping steadily.

A new study — Worklife Balance as a Household Negotiation: A new Perspective from Rural India by Dr. Rachael Goodman of Mercer University and Dr. Sarah Kaplan of the University of Toronto — is based on field research with Indian women employed outside the home in the rural northern state of Uttarakhand. The researchers found that work-life balance was possible for these women, but could only be achieved through negotiations within families to shift household labour burdens, not by individual women reallocating their time.

Most of the women in the study live on farms, and despite barriers that include a high burden of household labour, lack of labour-saving appliances, and gendered norms about women’s presence in public spaces, a number of women held off-farm jobs — but only when someone else took over some of their household responsibilities.

Those people were family members, more likely women, although men also contributed in certain cases. Almost always the motivation for women working off the farm was economic, although increasingly younger women take advantage of the period in their lives before they gain family responsibilities to get both a post-secondary education and a career.

It’s not unique to rural India, although the circumstances may differ. Women on Canadian farms understand the pressures and stresses of trying to balance multiple roles, which is why there is a lot to be learned from this study.

In India, families redistributed household work in different ways depending on the woman worker’s stage in life and the family’s circumstances. What was common across all the families, though, was that the redistribution was negotiated among all the adults involved. 

“Before a woman would go out to work (off the farm), there had to be a conversation because she did so much at home that her leaving would have a big impact, and so it was something that the whole family had to be a part of,” says Goodman, who did the actual field work in India, and who believes Canadian farm families need to have the same conversations. 

“Women, especially those with families, can’t just pick up and do it, and add yet another job to their workload. They need to have those discussions when they are overburdened about how they can share responsibilities and get help,” Goodman says. “It’s important to have those conversations openly because if you are not having them people will just assume that you are fine.”

In countries like Canada and the U.S., part of the solution might mean relying on services like formal daycare, ordering a meal in or sending clothes out to be washed, although even these services aren’t always any more available to Canadian farm families in rural areas than they are to Indian ones. 

It can also mean other options need to be explored, like flexible work arrangements that take into consideration the rhythms of the farming year, so employers need to be part of the conversation too.

“One of the most overlooked things in the western world is how much people rely on families,” Goodman says. “We should acknowledge that work and value it.” 

The discussion is only beginning, and it needs to continue, she believes. “A lot of farm families in Canada have more in common with farm families in India than they may have in common with someone who lives in a city in Canada.”

The post The equitable farm appeared first on Country Guide.

Without exception, these young women all wanted to know why I was asking such an outdated question! It’s true the shift in ag’s gender balance is far from over, but still, Statistics Canada reported in 2019 that students enrolled in bachelor degrees or equivalent in the area of agriculture, natural resources and conservation were 63 percent female. These newly educated women will have a big impact on all aspects of the industry in the years to come.

But what will that change look like?

Who’s running the board?

When researchers at the University of Regina looked at the current state of women in ag for a recent report, they found that of 65 national and provincial agricultural associations, only 12 per cent had a woman as board chair or president. Fewer than one in five of these groups had a woman on their executive committee.

This matches what I’ve seen at commodity group meetings. But the world won’t stay this way for long.

• Read more: A question for women in 2022

Women like Josie Huber are sure to be running these kinds of organizations in the future. Huber grew up on a farm near Wilkie, Saskatchewan, and now she’s a student at the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan. She’s also the president of the Agriculture Students Association (ASA).

When I asked Huber about being a woman in the agriculture college, she seemed a little confused that I thought it might be an issue.

It hadn’t occurred to Huber that being a woman would be a disadvantage when she ran for ASA president. This was partly because she’s not the first female ASA president (though she is the first since 2016), but mainly because she doesn’t think it matters. “There’s no expectation that a man should be leading things,” she says. “It’s just a matter of ‘Are you qualified?’”

Huber had the same experience interviewing for summer jobs in the ag industry. She didn’t think interviewers were concerned about her gender; she felt the criteria was “Are you a good person to fill this position?” There were women on the decision panels for all of her summer job interviews, and many of her co-workers and managers were female.

She did admit to having a few minor hiccups when giving agronomy advice to older (male) farmers. “I would tell them what I was seeing, and they would be hesitant to believe me. I’d bring the supervisor out, so the supervisor could tell them the same thing.” This tactic didn’t always work when she had a female supervisor. “Some of them still want to hear a man’s voice.”

Huber was quick to explain that this attitude came almost exclusively from older farmers. “This younger generation is more open to the change,” she says. “It’s not unusual to have different genders or different races, all mixed together.” Huber is grateful that women have opportunities these days that they might have had to work harder for in the past. “Now it’s the norm, because they fought for us,” she says.

On the family farm, Huber’s mother was actively involved, and she too was encouraged to join in. She was brought up to believe there were no hurdles to doing whatever she wanted to do.

One day, Huber may go back to the farm. But for now, she’s focused on education, probably a masters degree in agricultural economics. If she chooses, don’t be surprised to see her chairing board meetings too. 

Who’s managing the farm?

Alice Rooke has better things to do than discuss whether or not she’s a farmer. She’s too busy farming. 

While women are making great strides in some areas of the industry, things tend to move a little more slowly where the boots hit the ground — on the farm. According to that University of Regina report, women make up only 25 per cent of Canadian farm operators. This statistic is probably unreliable. Many women on farms struggle with calling themselves “farmers.” This winter, a Twitter debate about whether women like me are “farm wives” or “farmers” took up an unreasonable amount of my cell phone data. People had strong opinions on sides of the issue I’d never even thought of. Some women said their spouses were “farm husbands.”

Some of the confusion over who gets to call themselves a farmer may be the result of an old Statistics Canada policy — before 1991 every farm could have only one designated operator, which meant most farm operations likely just defaulted to the person running the tractor. These days, it seems fair to assume that it takes more than one person to run a farm, and that all kinds of jobs fit within the definition of what a farmer does.

• Read more: Different goals for women in ag

Personally, I’m not sure if I’m a farmer. I’m sure our accountant sees me as an equal partner. I do the bookkeeping, and put in my fair share of time running the combine. I also do a lot of the things that aren’t technically “farming” — running for parts, making dinner, calling the chemical dealer to pay the bill. But when it’s time to change the heavy sprayer tires, I suddenly have an article to write.

Alice Rooke, meanwhile, is a student at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences. While other students were disappointed when the U of M switched to online learning last fall, Rooke was happy to have a chance to go back to the farm near Alexander, Man., for calving season. (Though she does admit it’s been challenging to keep the rest of her family off the internet while she’s watching lectures, so she has enough bandwidth for a decent signal.)

Rooke was raised on a farm in England with two farming parents. “My mother was a farmer’s wife, but my dad is also a farmer’s husband,” she says. “My parents farm 50-50. That’s how I’ve been raised.”

When her family immigrated, they came as a family to build a new farm. Rooke was only 13 but, she says, “I’ve always known I would definitely be in agriculture.” While she’s finishing an education and not sure exactly on what path it will take her, her goal is still to wind up on the farm. “I wanted to go farming. That’s still my plan.”

The Rookes have a mixed farm with 400 calving cows, including 100 purebred red Angus. They also seed 6,000 acres and offer custom operations ranging from seeding to forage harvesting and combining. Generally, Alice Rooke is more interested in cattle production than the grain side of the operation, but she does work on both. “I was raised in a very hands-on environment,” she says. “I didn’t just help with the nice things.”

When thinking about her work on the farm, it hasn’t occurred to Rooke that being a woman was a disadvantage. Like Huber, she seemed surprised I was asking. “I think there is equal opportunity in the ag industry for young men and young women alike.” 

She does admit to experiencing a hurdle similar to the one mentioned by Huber. When she’s working as a sales agronomist in the summer, she says, “the older generation (of men) will take a while to warm up to you.” Instead of sexism, Rooke chalks a lot of this up to her still being young. But if it is sexism, she’s not worried. “If someone from the older generation has a problem with me being their agronomist, it’s not my problem,” she says.

Rooke says the companies she’s worked for have as many female agronomists as male. “I’ve never sat waiting for a job interview and felt that I didn’t have as much of a chance as the next guy.”

Alice Rooke believes women are much more accepted in agriculture now than ever before. “It’s a case of thinking you’re unequal,” she says. “Really, there’s a lot of chairs at this table.” Sometimes, she says, women will wait to be invited, or have the idea that they aren’t able to do the things men do.

For her part, she doesn’t wait. “You have a place there. You deserve to be in the industry,” she says.

As more women work in agriculture, young women have fewer reasons to think they can’t do anything they want. “I have lots of role models in the industry,” Rooke says. “Female cattle farmers, veterinarians, agronomists, powerful women that wouldn’t think twice about what they do. They know they have every bit of ability and knowledge and right to be doing what they do.” While she realizes things were different in the past, these days, she says, “I don’t think that there is inequality in our industry. If you feel that there’s a glass ceiling, you don’t have to acknowledge it, or think you don’t deserve something. If you choose to ignore it, it doesn’t exist.”

Who’s maintaining the tractor?

Even though she’s taken an active role on the farm, Alice Rooke admits that repairing machinery isn’t her passion. It’s not unusual to see more men than women in this area of agriculture. The Regina report also notes that “Gendered divisions of labour remain strong in industrialized ag settings.” A completely unscientific assessment of the farms in my neighbourhood reveals that this is probably still true. Not too many women are interested in fixing the swather. 

• Read more: Women and men in conversation, and work

But there will be more in the future, and one of them will be Ellen Dahlman. Dahlman is finishing up her Agricultural Equipment Technician (AET) apprenticeship technical training at Saskatchewan Polytechnic in Saskatoon. Once she’s passed the journeyperson certification exam, she’ll go back to work at the New Holland dealership at Assiniboia.

Dahlman always liked helping with harvest and with the cattle on her family’s farm near Mankota, Sask. When she first left home, she studied to become a physiotherapist, but found she wasn’t enjoying it. Moving from fixing people to fixing machinery was a big change. “My friends thought I was crazy,” she says. And Dahlman is definitely on the final frontier for women. She’s been the only woman in her classes at Sask Polytech. But she’s pleased with how it has turned out. 

Dahlman likes working at the dealership, and, although she’s the only female mechanic on the job, she says she doesn’t have any trouble. “The guys that I work with treat me well,” she says. “They give me a hand if I need a hand. If they need a hand, I give them a hand. I’m kind of small so I fit in the spaces where they can’t.” As for lifting heavy things, she says “It’s actually not too bad. For the most part you make it work.” Sometimes, Dahlman can get around heavy lifting by making her own specific tools to make the jobs easier.

So far, we haven’t had a female mechanic on our farm. I asked Dahlman if farmers were surprised to see a small woman, on her own, driving the company service truck into their yard. “Most of the encounters I’ve had have been good,” she says. “You’ll get the odd farmer lingering, making sure you’re doing the job right.” But Dahlman can’t be sure this is related to gender. (Full disclosure: I’ve seen my husband do this when men come to fix his machinery. He thinks it’s a good chance to learn something.) “I’m more likely to get comments about my size,” Dahlman says, “not comments about my not being able to mentally do the job.” 

Of course, it isn’t only the machinery that’s broken down by the time she arrives. As the person who shows up on the farm when things are at a standstill and farmers are under pressure to get back into the field, Dahlman sees farmers at their worst. “It’s a bit intimidating, but I don’t want to tell them that,” she says, laughing.

Don’t get left behind

Like Huber and Rooke, Dahlman thought I was a little out of touch, asking these questions. Of course she can do her job. “I don’t want to be a poster girl. You don’t want to support that stigma by making a big deal of it. Just try to make it seem like a normal thing, and it will end up being normal.”

None of these three women are worried about not being accepted by the older generation of men in agriculture. Instead, they all came across as believing sexism is a relic of the past, something that will change as the next generation moves forward — a generation that’s been raised seeing competent women in positions of power throughout the industry. 

So if you’re one of those people who’s still not sure women belong at the ag industry table, you’d better be ready to keep your opinion to yourself. Unless you want to be dismissed by the people making more and more decisions in this industry.

The post Are you ready for this? appeared first on Country Guide.

I wondered recently if Guide should do an issue where all the farmers and all the business advisors, in fact where all the sources we talked to would be women.

To drive home the point, we wouldn’t mention it. We’d just do it, print an all-women issue. And we’d let the world notice. 

I confess I started out really liking the idea. But in the end I dropped it. Not, obviously, because we couldn’t have filled an issue with insightful, skillful, professional women performing at the top of the industry. 

Instead, I dropped the idea because I liked it too much. I wanted it to be true, but it’s too early. It would have too much of a “mission accomplished.” 

In short, Guide would be guilty of closing the door on any further exploration of gender issues at a time when we need to persevere and keep driving forward.

• Read more: A question for women in 2022
• Read more: A Canadian woman’s experience in ag

An important day in my life occurred many years ago when I did a story on a women’s shelter that was opening in rural Ontario. 

I did the story even though I couldn’t imagine that any farm family I knew could ever need such a service. 

I was set straight pretty quickly, and with an appropriate bump. “Open your eyes,” I was told. Didn’t I know of women who disappeared from public view after they married, who stopped returning phone calls, who never went to town on their own? 

Much good has been done, but the terror hasn’t gone away. It runs too deep. Nor have the attitudes and presumptions that lead to it across the range of social, economic and educational strata in the countryside. 

I remember too when Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was charged with sex crimes, and I wrote in this spot that the question wasn’t whether there are any Harvey Weinsteins in agriculture, but how many there are. Who knows whether I was right. In agriculture, the topic has gone silent. 

And I remember getting a call from an upset reader who told me, not as long ago as we’d like to think, that
I stop writing about women on the farm. Didn’t I know, he said, that his four-year-old son always wanted to go with him on the tractor while his six-year-old daughter insisted on staying home with her mother. As if their responses weren’t socially conditioned. 

It all dies hard. We have more progress to make, across all kinds of borders. How do we make Canada’s farms equitable at every level, instead of simply saying the opportunity is equal? 

In many respects, Canada’s farming men have made real progress. In fact, I have also wanted us to do serious writing about how much progress many men have made. It’s another one for the wish list. 

There’s so much more to say. So much has been gained. And yes, we should feel great about that. But let’s not be satisfied. 

You won’t see that women’s issue of Guide any time soon, but we’ll continue writing abut gender issues. 

Are we getting it right? I’m at tom.button@fbcpublishing.com.

The post Editor’s Note: It’s too early to say the battle for gender equality is won appeared first on Country Guide.

“At the time, I was just thinking about the functionality of the group, making sure you had different departments and skill sets at the table,” Heck recalls.

The team got to work; it began finding ways for the company to cope with the evolving situation, and something struck Heck about the team and the reason it was proving so effective.

“It wasn’t due to the individual skill sets,” he says he realized. “It was due to the diversity of individual circumstances that it represented.”

The new COVID-19 team represented a broad swath of the employee base. And while it had gender diversity with five women and three men on the team, it also reflected the many diverse impacts that the pandemic was having on different people within the company. “We had a lot of different perspectives that were weighing in.”

“And although starting a team that’s quite diverse, early on, takes a while to get the momentum going, once we did, we were a much better team than if we would have been from a very narrow sliver of the organization in terms of demographics and gender,” Heck says. “In the end, it raised the bar in terms of the overall performance of the team, and generated a much better result for the organization by having that diversity.”

Diversity in the DNA

If anything, COVID-19 heightened Syngenta’s appreciation of the importance of its ongoing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in its daily operations, values, practices and programs.

Part of it is no surprise. Syngenta is a global company based in Switzerland with 28,000 employees across almost every major agricultural region. In order to thrive in that context , it must have an inclusive culture, Heck says.

“It’s part of our DNA of being a global company,” he says. “We’re a company that is driven by research and development and bringing new technology to customers. There is a belief that having a diverse team, and an inclusive culture that supports that diverse team leads to greater teamwork within the organization. We feel that we’re going to benefit from diverse perspectives, and it’s going to drive innovation.”

But that still leaves the question: How do you do you incorporate diversity in a way that brings those benefits?

A key early learning was that buy-in from leadership was crucial. Active diversification is a top-down process that must be supported by the company’s leaders.

“What we learned is that you have to focus in order to get the progress that you’d like to make,” Heck says. “From a leadership perspective, we had to get organized to make sure we were focusing in the right areas and getting the best results for the employees.”

But it’s also an empowering process that is being driven by the employees themselves. Syngenta has had employee resource groups (ERGs) for the past few years. These voluntary, employee-led groups act as a resource for both employees and the community by developing awareness through communications efforts, strategic events and engagement opportunities.

There are three global groups: for young professionals, women and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) colleagues, as well as more than 30 regional groups that represent different ERGs, including the Hispanic and African American communities.

Then, about two years ago, momentum started to build around the ERGs that brought even more DEI opportunities to the forefront.

“We had a lot of the framework within the organization, but we started to do a deep dive on our strategy, and how we were going to hold ourselves to an implementation plan,” Heck says. 

Syngenta surveyed its employees, and a clear answer came back.They wanted to see the company’s leadership not just talking about DEI, but being involved and passionate about it.

“The first thing that we all agreed is that our leadership was going to be accountable on our own activities within DEI,” Heck says. “That is what our employees want to see from leadership, but you also need to do that as an individual … That was a step change for us.”

Building on a strong base

Syngenta brought DEI experts into the organization, including a new diversity inclusion lead for North America, to help it work through the topic and find focus.

Strong training and engagement programs were already in place, and these became a huge asset for embedding DEI in the fabric of the company.

It worked. With constant training and a commitment at all levels to embedding DEI into the fabric of the company, Heck found everyone starts to speak a common language.

“The reason why that’s important is it starts to break down the barriers,” Heck says. “It helps you get insight into your own areas of discomfort or potentially more insights into your own areas of bias that you bring as an individual, which is important as you try and move the program forward.”

Syngenta is also training front line managers in inclusive hiring practices, which Heck sees as widening the field for finding the very best people.

“When we’re hiring for a new role, we are looking at the hiring practices, the interview process, the posting process to make sure that we’re being as inclusive as possible,” Heck says.

“Syngenta has said we want to hire the best talent in Canada, and we have to look far and wide and beyond the traditional talent pools to find that talent. We want to bring a diverse team into the company with diverse skill sets, and support them.”

This needs everyone at all levels to be conscious of developing solutions to issues or creating opportunities that incorporate DEI as part of them.

A good example has been flexible work arrangements that were initially prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It became clear as the pandemic began that many different individual circumstances could put staff in a difficult place in terms of working a regular schedule such as commitments for caregiving to an elderly relative, for example, or having children doing their schooling at home.

“The approach we took in that situation was to be extremely flexible and open to the conversation around what are you going through,” Heck says. “How can some of the company’s policies adapt to appeal to a broad audience of employees regardless of their circumstances, or approach, or background?” 

Inclusion is a goal

The acid test for DEI is the inclusion end of things. That’s often where the rubber meets the road and makes people feel they are an important part of the team, and that their work and ideas are valued. Importantly, it also builds pride in the organization they work for.

Yet inclusion is hard to measure.

So how has Syngenta approached the inclusion piece? What is it doing to make employees feel they truly belong?

Positive DEI actions taken by the company worldwide include flexible work arrangements and a focus on women, with a fifth of leadership roles now being held by women and a commitment to increase that in the future. Syngenta is also working to raise LGBTQ awareness inside and outside the company, and has signed the United Nations LGBTQ Standards of Conduct for Businesses to help tackle discrimination against LGBTQ people in the workplace, marketplace and community.

The company provides training for its leaders and employees to make them more aware of unconscious bias and behaviours that undermine inclusion, and it works to support positive mental health. Syngenta is a member of the Valuable 500 global movement that puts disability on the business leadership agenda.

“Employees are always looking at whether the organization is a fit for them and if it fits their purpose or values,” Heck says. “You have to be open with your approach, and you have to be authentic. You have to offer a strategy, approach and behaviours so that employees say, “that’s validated my view of the organization, they truly care about me as an employee regardless of where I am, or what my approach is, or what my background is.”

Heck believes DEI is an essential element of any business culture that hopes to be successful in a world that increasingly expects social, environmental and ethical responsibility from those it does business with.

“Syngenta would like to be known in the industry as the organization that customers and other companies should be partnering with because we’re a leader in the DEI space,” Heck says.

“We want to attract diverse talent into the company. And when they get here, we want them to feel at home so they want to be part of a great organization going forward. If we can foster that sense of belonging within the organization, we truly feel it’s going to be a competitive advantage for the organization.”

The post Corporate diversity, equity and inclusion appeared first on Country Guide.

Then ask them what kind of response they get when they talk about gender equality in agriculture.

Here’s a big response they’ll report for sure. “What do you mean women are underrepresented in the industry, or that they’re inequitably paid? And what’s this talk about discrimination and sexism? That doesn’t exist anymore.”

It’s feedback they hear all the time, and it comes not just from men, but women too.

So, who’s right?

Well, people who actually study the issue say that the old gender issues are still with us. There’s no way they’re a thing of the past. In fact, many women still face barriers to advancement and equal participation on the farm and throughout the broader ag industry.

“We have learned by observation and looking at data that agriculture is still a male-dominated environment,” says Laura Lazo, co-founder of MWAF (Manitoba Women in Agriculture and Food), a group that seeks to develop career and business opportunities to support and advance women, including those from underrepresented groups.

Gender issues exist, but that doesn’t mean we all recognize it. “Sometimes, the men and women who told me that men and women had equal opportunities and similar income, changed their minds when I present them the statistics,” Lazo says. “The disparity between gender income and job roles is present and real. All you have to do is to look at publicly available statistics to see that.”

Although at the post-secondary educational level the gender ratio is 50/50, and in some cases more, things change after graduation.

“When you go to conferences, trade shows and meetings, men are in the majority and there are fewer women in higher-level positions in the industry as well,” Lazo says. “It’s what we call the leaky pipeline — women fall out along their way up.”

• Read more: A Canadian woman’s experience in ag

That aligns with data from the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) that shows over 90 per cent of women experience barriers to achieving management positions in the industry.

Meat business women

Across the pond in the United Kingdom, one segment of the ag industry has done the hard work of finding out exactly how many women work in the meat industry. 

It turns out their work is documenting a pattern that occurs time and again in agriculture and on the farm, even in Canada.

Meat Business Women has commissioned an extensive research study providing a numerical and disturbing baseline. Globally, 36 per cent of people working in the meat industry are female, but at the board level that drops to 14 per cent. And at the CEO level, a mere five per cent are women.

Among unskilled workers in the industry, by contrast, 40 per cent are women.

Recognized by the UN, Meat Business Women started small in England six years ago, but has since grown into a global networking group for women working across the meat industry with local committees in the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and a growing number of individual and corporate members all across the world.

Critics who expect the group to be fiercely vegetarian will be disappointed. So will anyone expecting them to be revolutionaries of any other kind. Instead, the group’s vision is absolutely pro industry: “championing the meat industry as a great place to build a fulfilling lifelong career — where everyone can express their full potential.”

According to founder, Laura Ryan, who has worked in the meat sector for more than 20 years, Meat Business Women intends to help achieve that as a global, professional networking group for women working across the meat industry.

“Our mission is to inspire others to see the meat industry in a different light, to show the amazing roles that exist, and to be transparent about what the meat industry offers,” Ryan says.

Today, Meat Business Women has over 7,000 followers on LinkedIn and other social media channels, with members all along the supply chain including producers, processors, retailers and food service. More than 5,000 people have attended its events worldwide, with numbers increasing as it offers more virtual programs and events.

But still, it has a big challenge ahead of it.

Women stall on the corporate ladder

“The data clearly show that industries with more gender balance and diversity are more profitable,” Ryan says. “And for industries like ours that normally are running on wafer-thin margins, why wouldn’t you want that? As well, organizations with more balance make better business decisions, they’re more agile and have better governance.”

The case for both gender and ethnic cultural diversity in corporate leadership is strong. According to Diversity Wins: How inclusion matters prepared by McKinsey & Company in the U.K., diversity is good for profitability. It compared the gender diversity of the executive teams of companies that scored in the top 25 per cent for profitability against those in the bottom 25 per cent. Diverse companies, it found, were 25 per cent more likely to have above-average profitability in 2019. That’s up from 21 per cent in 2017 and 15 per cent in 2014.

There is also a linear correlation to greater representation and higher performance. The report says: “Companies with more than 30 per cent women executives were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30, and in turn these companies were more likely to outperform those with even fewer women executives, or none at all.”

But the fact remains, the meat industry can be a tough sell to women. Meat Business Women’s research discovered that many people still assume the sector is macho, physically demanding and a tough environment to work in. 

Of female students in agricultural college, 55 per cent reported no or little knowledge of the sector when making career choices, and 37 per cent believed they would face barriers to success because of their gender.

Their preconceptions are in line with the reality. For women, the meat industry has a career ladder that is missing some crucial rungs.

If women don’t climb the ladder, it isn’t because they take time off for families, the research shows. Instead, it’s because these companies insist that their CEOs have strong operational backgrounds. But these companies don’t hire women for operational roles.

And because they don’t hire women for operational roles, they don’t put time and energy into looking at how operational jobs could be made a better fit for women.

“Women are filling roles in quality control, marketing, finance, research and development, and human resources, but those aren’t the roles that feed us to the top,” Ryan says. “It’s important we make operational roles attractive to female talent so we’ve got a chance at getting in the organic pipeline.”

Towards that aim, the group recently launched a campaign called “She Looks Like Me,” a series of videos that showcase women in different roles in the meat sector.

“The meat industry can be very faceless,” Ryan says. “Creating female role models, so women can see people who are like them, is so important.” 

Where are Canada’s numbers?

Meanwhile, it’s tough get a handle on gender equity in Canadian agriculture because the statistics simply don’t exist. No one has a clear picture of the roles women play across all segments of the industry.

MariJo Patino, co-founder of MWAF, is an agricultural economist and currently runs a Winnipeg-based freelance research consultancy. Patino has spent a lot of time combing through all the data scattered through various research, reports and statistics on agriculture, and says there is little information in terms of the actual gender and pay ratios, or where there are gaps or challenges that need to be addressed. 

“There are more than two million people working in the Canadian agricultural system, and we don’t know how many of those are women,” Patino says. “Are they doing the same things as their male counterparts, and are they being paid the same. If there is a wage gap, how much is it?” 

There are no comprehensive answers, because of how the data is produced and compiled. MWAF is looking for funding so it can work with Statistics Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to analyze occupational and income gender data in order to develop information resources that the industry can use to develop HR initiatives focused on attracting diversity.

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“I didn’t realize what some of those barriers were because I lived in this glass house that was run by women, and that was just how things were,” she says. “But now, I have some personal experience with things like sexism and generational differences, and wage gaps.”

VanderHeide spent some time working outside of agriculture as an educational assistant and receptionist before she married husband, James. Today, VanderHeide works full-time alongside James on their own cow-calf operation, as well as growing crops and operating the broiler chicken farm owned by her in-laws, and like many women who have married into a family farm structure, she has sometimes found it hard to find her place.

“I get paid the same as my husband, but not necessarily treated the same, and I understand some of that is because I’m not blood family, but as far as recognition for what I contribute or what my value is, it’s not often recognized,” she says.

Although VanderHeide is well aware that her experiences are not unique, she finds it easier to understand intergenerational considerations that may affect someone’s behaviour or reasoning than to encounter a lack of respect for one’s value or contribution at the board table.

“There are still comments sometimes around the board table where someone says something and they don’t realize that they are offending a woman that’s at the table,” says VanderHeide. “Then there are the bigger issues like the wage gap, and just being underrepresented because there’s still a very prominent ‘Old Boys’ Club’ mentality in agriculture, so it’s intimidating for a lot of young women especially, to break through that.”

VanderHeide is involved in various industry organizations: Kings County Federation of Agriculture, as president of the Chicken Producers Association of Nova Scotia, member of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture Public Trust Committee, and a director with the Do More Agriculture Foundation. 

She is also a co-founder of the Facebook group — Maritime Ag-Women’s Network (MAWN) — that connects women in agriculture across the Maritimes. MAWN has grown since 2016 to over 1,100 followers, and is having a big impact through women supporting and empowering each other, and building their confidence to achieve new goals and seize opportunities in the industry. 

“It’s been amazing to see members of the group be introduced to other areas of agriculture and all the opportunities that have come up for them as a result,” VanderHeide says. “It has really helped to reduce some of those barriers like imposter syndrome, that feeling that you are out of place. By having someone give a bit of a nudge, it helps build confidence so you can say ‘I do belong here’ and there are people behind me that have been here, and are there to catch me if I fall. We are seeing that every day and it makes a real impact.”

Things are starting to slowly change, especially with regard to women’s roles in agriculture at all levels, and VanderHeide believes this is the time to push gender conversations to keep the momentum towards better gender equity in an industry that is going to need to embrace diversity at all levels to ensure its future.

“I think we’re in the perfect position right now to engage industry in gender conversations,” VanderHeide says. “We have those who’ve paved the way for us, our grandmothers and mothers, who are still around to teach us about their stories. We can use them to showcase how women have been involved in agriculture all along and what we’ve learned from them. We’re also opening up a lot more and sharing our roles, struggles and accomplishments which, in turn, will make the path that much easier for the next generation of ag women to step up behind us.”

Although progress on issues around equality and diversity may be slow, it’s not going to change without reaching beyond long-established comfort zones, and embedded preconceptions and traditions.

“We need to bring in people that weren’t brought up in agriculture but have so much knowledge on the other side of things to contribute to it. Whether that is going into farming itself, or whether that’s going in to work in industry, it’s about making sure that those messages are going out to the right people but also to more people and more groups that aren’t necessarily ag-based,” VanderHeide says.

VanderHeide has three sons; Jackson (13), Warren (nine) and Clay (seven), and she is hopeful that by the time they are ready to take over as the next generation, these kinds of conversations won’t be needed any more.

“Instead of repeating ourselves, and developing policies and mandates, we just hope that we can stop having these conversations one day about women who are experiencing sexism at work, or asking ‘Why did this tractor dealer ask for my husband when I own the farm?’ because that won’t be a reality anymore,” VanderHeide says.

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But that may be beginning to change.

Entrepreneur Laura Lazo, who also serves as chair and co-founder of Manitoba Women in Agriculture and Food (MWAF) believes inclusion is contagious, and it’s only going to gather more steam in the agricultural industry.

“People are talking about it, conferences are organized around it,” Lazo says. “Companies are talking about it, and the industry knows that in order to meet business goals, it must attract more people from those untapped pools of talented women in under-represented groups.”

Believing that all women are equal regardless of their demographic category, MWAF has decided to work to advance them all equally.

MWAF not only works to connect women to farm and ag opportunities, but a key goal is to specifically advance women from under-represented groups. MWAF offers a variety of business and skills training and resources that encourage and support women entrepreneurs, and is now looking at how to help the industry embed DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policies into their workplaces and hiring practices.

Recognizing barriers

It all began when Lazo met MWAF co-founder, Marijo Patino a few years ago and realized they had a lot in common. Both had grown up outside Canada, and both were in the process of establishing their own agricultural consulting companies. They also experienced challenges in attending industry training and events such as the Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference (AWC), which they knew were crucial to help them build their networks and businesses.

“The AWC is the perfect place to meet people and companies and to learn and make business connections but attending industry events can sometimes be a challenge without the financial support of an employer,” Lazo says.

Because they both knew plenty of women who faced similar challenges, they got together to see if they could find solutions. 

“We knew many women, Canadian-born or not, who were experiencing barriers, and there were many reasons for that,” Lazo says. “If you are not a born-and-bred Canadian, you’re pretty much racialized. On top of that, if you don’t have a farming background, you don’t get the same job opportunities in the industry. If you are a certain age, you face ageism, which is true for everyone, not just those in agriculture.”

The two decided there was a need for a group dedicated to supporting all women who were involved, or wanting to be involved, in the agricultural industry. They began talking to other like-minded women, and within a month had recruited a board of directors, and established MWAF. 

Still a lot to learn

Lazo and Patino soon realized they had a lot to learn about governance and organizational structure, so they consulted an industry development specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and Resource Development, who conducted a review of the new group and identified areas it needed to work on, helping them to access training and resources to learn more about running a registered, non-profit organization, which MWAF became.

It was a good start, and the group began small, with no funding except the money coming out of their own pockets. They created a webpage and started building a social media following. Patino also conducted a survey of the people they had already contacted who were interested in the group, to figure out what the focus of its services should be.

Priorities that arose included the need for networking events and professional development and training resources. In partnership with other organizations such as Farm Credit Canada, MWAF began to develop these resources, such as workshops in business plan development for women entrepreneurs in agriculture or other sectors.

The group arranged farm tours as networking and cultural events. “We wanted people that live in the city to get to know farmers and their farms, and establish a connection to educate people about agriculture,” Lazo says.

They also developed networking events like an annual general meeting (prior to COVID-19 restrictions) and a monthly virtual networking program called AgChat, hosted by leaders in the agricultural industry. A group of 17 farm women have been producing short videos for MWAF’s YouTube channel about life on the farm, intended to highlight farm women, and the culture and diversity of agriculture. The organization is also part of a Portage la Prairie working group that is developing a new concept that celebrates women in agriculture, community and diversity. It will consist of two parts, one a virtual event, and a farmers market with an ethnic component next summer.

Today, MWAF has a social media following of over 6,000 people and membership has been steadily growing, although a big aim for the group is to increase the number of both individual and corporate members in order to achieve its potential in the industry.

Working for all women in agriculture

MWAF is not a diversity group but an organization that fully embraces equality and inclusion and works for all women in agriculture regardless of their demographic categorization.

MWAF also represents innovation in agriculture in the sense that the founders did not grow up in Canada or have farm backgrounds, and the board and membership are fully diverse. 

Lazo grew up in Argentina and currently runs her own human resources consulting company specializing in agriculture, while Patino, an economist by training, is working as an independent consultant for companies in the agri-food sector. 

Lazo came to Canada in 1983 and completed a Masters and PhD at Dalhousie University, which is where she met her husband, John. She had never intended to stay in Canada; in fact, her plan was to return to Argentina to continue her work in marine biology, but when her husband was offered a faculty position at the University of Manitoba, they settled in Winnipeg.

After their son was born, Lazo worked for a while as a consultant in roles involving business and partnership development and public relations before accepting a position at the U of M’s faculty of agriculture and food sciences to manage its student placement programs. It was during this time that Lazo was first introduced to the Canadian agricultural industry.

Today, there is a group representing women in agriculture in every province across Canada and MWAF works with them, but what makes MWAF different is its focus. 

“We specifically recognize under-represented women in one of our goals because they face stiffer barriers,” Lazo says.

“We are proud of our diversity. Our board and membership include women who are from Canada and otherwise, and with and without farming backgrounds. We also represent women that are entrepreneurs and corporate employees, as well as farm women. Our approach is to support all women in the agricultural sector regardless of their role because agriculture offers multiple opportunities in production, but also in products and service sectors for people from just about any discipline.”

Those opportunities, though, are not always equally available, especially to racialized women. This, says Lazo, is a detriment to the industry.

MWAF’s vision and direction reflects the diversity of backgrounds and outlooks of the people who make up the group.

“Some board members were not originally from Canada, but most of our members are,” Patino says.

Patino is an economist with more than 10 years of research experience working for governments, academia, and industries in agriculture, food and industrial development in Canada, the United States and Latin America. In 2014, she came to the University of Manitoba from her native Paraguay to complete a masters in Agribusiness and agricultural economics for a career in ag, but getting practical experience of Canadian farming and agriculture proved to be a major obstacle to her career aspiration to be a freelance researcher for projects related to agriculture and technology.

Where to get started?

Linda Zhou, MWAF’s director of planning and sustainability, currently works as a research analyst at Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation. She also came as an international student from China to complete the same masters degree as Patino at the University of Manitoba. For Zhou, a major obstacle was a lack of understanding of not just Canadian agriculture, but Canadian culture in general, which meant it was hard for her to develop the understanding and confidence she needed to pursue opportunities. 

“For anyone from a different culture, it’s hard because you don’t know where to go to get started,” Zhou says, adding a group of farmers offered her an entry-level job, which she took as an opportunity to gain experience, but many international students don’t get the same chance. “MWAF provides that platform to access opportunities and a wider network, whether it’s through a farm tour, or event or a webinar to add new skills. It’s very useful because it helps you see what people are doing, and be more confident, and that’s very important.”

It’s important that MWAF’s vision is not just bottom-up, but also top-down, adds Zhou, pointing to a recent AgChat webinar that was hosted by Trevor Heck, president of Syngenta Canada, a corporation that is working to incorporate DEI principles into its global workforce.

“We are showing that there is also a push for DEI from the top and that people at a high level in major corporations care about it,” Zhou says. “If the push is from both ends, we’re going to make things happen. If I had these kinds of opportunities while I was a student, I would have been more confident. MWAF is trying to get people into the industry faster and help them to level up easier.”

The need for more diversity

The 2017 Barton Report (a set of recommendations from the Federal Government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth) has said that Canada could become the world’s second-largest agricultural exporter of safe, nutritious and sustainable food — it is currently fifth.

But to achieve that potential, it says, Canada needs more people.

Lazo believes that because MWAF has a good handle on diversity, it can play a key role in connecting employers with the human resources they need and provide DEI services.

“As we mature, we realize we can play a significant role in connecting people and industry stakeholders. We have a two-pronged approach,” Lazo says. “One is to support women, and the other is to support the industry by providing them with the kind of people and services they need, and to help them develop policies to attract and retain more women.”

MWAF has a constantly updated job board on its website to help employers and potential employees connect with each other, and is ready to do more, says Lazo, to assist the industry in matters around DEI. It’s important to understand, though, that the gender gap is not a “women-only” issue but has an impact on everyone, Lazo adds, which is why MWAF is keen to involve more men. “If a spouse, mother, sister or daughter cannot fulfill her ambitions, there are emotional and long-term economic impacts on the rest of the family,” she says. “Involving men in speaking about gender issues and taking actions that support women in corporations and businesses will help close the occupational and income gap.”

Progress being made, but slowly

There are signs of positive change. The federal government announced in its 2021 budget that it will provide $146.9 million over four years to support women entrepreneurs and announced a public consultation process to foster inclusivity in the Canadian financial sector.

Many major companies are looking at how they can incorporate the principles of DEI into their organizational culture and are investing in initiatives to attract more women and others from diverse groups to their workplaces.

“We don’t yet have a metric to be able to assess the degree of change but by word of mouth, or in speaking with companies, we know what they are doing individually, but we don’t know the extent of the transformation across the sector,” Lazo says. “I suspect that there is not a whole lot of actual measurable change.”

On a cultural level, in fact, there is still a lot of resistance to DEI. “People say that diversity is good, but saying and doing are not the same thing,” Lazo says. “Good will and positive thinking alone are not enough to change the status of things. It takes talking, and doing … but it is the way to a prosperous and competitive industry.”

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