Farm women aren’t happy that their views are rarely solicited when government forms agricultural policies, says a report prepared for the National Farmers Union.
“Many government officials are male, urban and unaware of the reality of life on family farms and in rural communities,” said the report, which was released in late July.
“The policies that are developed, therefore, address only the issues they can comprehend.”
Even when consultations are held with farm groups, the representatives tend to be men, so again women’s views are not heard, the study said.
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“Except for the NFU, none of the general farm organizations or commodity groups has structures or mechanisms to solicit farm women’s input.”
That is something the 105 women who were part of the study would like to change. They want government and farm organizations to include more women and go so far as to say that half of all the farmers at the table should be women.
The women’s views were gathered at five workshops held in the winter of 2003-04 in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario and Prince Edward Island.
Women told researchers that the lack of female input is partly blamed on the traditional conservative viewpoint in rural Canada. Even though women did farm work, it was seldom acknowledged.
“Because farm women entered official Canadian statistics as farmers only in 1991 (through a census question), it is perhaps no surprise that they have not been actively involved in developing Canada’s agricultural policy,” the report said. “Overnight, 25 percent of Canadian farmers suddenly became women. They had been there all along; they just had been invisible.”
The women said they and their spouses and families agreed that the farm financial crisis was the major stress in their lives. Low prices and high input costs were squeezing some out and discouraging farm children from taking over the business.
They blamed the low income, high debt problem on Ottawa’s market-oriented agricultural policy. With globalization portrayed as inevitable, agricultural policy became trade policy, the study reported them as saying.
“This represents a significant shift in how we value food. Rather than seeing food as a basic need and human right, food is increasingly seen as only a profit-making venture. More disturbingly, the production and distribution of food is increasingly in the hands of transnational agribusiness corporations.”
The women said their vision for agricultural policy rests on four pillars: financial stability; domestically sourced food; safe, healthy food that preserves the environment; and strengthening social and community infrastructure.
The study focused on Canada’s agricultural policy framework and asked if it equally reflects the needs of men and women. If not, what is missing? What would a gender-sensitive agricultural policy look like?
The women suggested a number of solutions:
- Require government departments to be accountable for ensuring women’s participation, and in every policy discussion, collect, differentiate and publicly share information about women’s participation and contributions to the process.
- Direct invitations specifically to farm women and ensure that meeting formats are woman friendly and facilitated by people familiar with participatory methods and sympathetic to gender dynamics.
- Hold consultations during farmers’ off seasons, give lots of notice of meetings and publicize dates, times and locations widely.
- Hold policy consultations in smaller rural communities and hold them at two different times, perhaps a weekday and a weekend, or an evening and an afternoon, so farmers with off-farm employment can attend.
- Ensure gender parity in all consultations by requiring existing agricultural organizations to collect and represent the distinct interests of farm men and women.
- Require existing general farm organizations and commodity groups to establish processes to increase women’s participation and leadership and to bring women’s input to policy tables.
- Provide funding to existing general farm organizations to improve women’s access to and participation in leadership and policy development, and support farm women’s groups to build leadership capacity among farm women, including assertiveness training.
- Ensure that a diversity of farm women are invited to each policy discussion, representing different ages, life stages, political views, farm sizes and kinds of production.
- Collect contributions using a variety of mechanisms, including e-mail.
- Pay farm women to attend these meetings. Bureaucrats and industry representatives are paid, but time away from the farm is time without pay. As well, most farm women now have off-farm jobs from which it may be difficult to obtain time off to attend meetings.
- Provide on-site child care or financial support for child care.
- Work with government and farm organizations to ensure that media give equal weight to women’s views on policy needs.
