The findings of a gender-based study are nothing new.
“It’s an old issue that’s always been there,” Vancouver Island farmer Jennifer Dyson said about the lack of a female face on agricultural policy.
Dyson used to be the women’s representative on the Canadian Federation of Agriculture board, a position that was eliminated a few years ago.
She is not an advocate of separate farm women’s groups because men and women who farm have the same issues.
However, because the sexes have different perspectives on things, “it’s absolutely critical to have a position there on CFA for women.”
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Women look at the bigger picture to include family and community, she added.
While a determined woman can rise to lead a farm organization, she noted that the British Columbia Agriculture Council has no women elected to its board. They are appointed onto committees, however, and the environment committee on which Dyson sits is half men and half women.
Colleen Ross, a farmer from Iroquois, Ont., and women’s president of the National Farmers Union, also said she didn’t find the study’s results surprising. She often walks into a meeting on the politics of food, whether in Canada or overseas, and is surrounded by a sea of suits – 50 to 100 men and few women. She said while Agriculture Canada has a gender policy, it is for its staff and not the farmers it meets with.
“For farmers to impose themselves into the process” of agricultural policy, Ross said, it helps to have credibility and authority by being elected. That is why she supports the NFU’s system that reserves seats on its board for a youth and a woman’s representative.
Ross isn’t optimistic the gender balance will shift soon. She said the women who are coming to ag policy meetings are not farmers but staff members who work for commodity groups. Also, she said, “this (federal) government is less inclusive of all grassroots groups.”
The lack of awareness of women’s issues is a bigger issue, not just agriculturally related, said Carolyn MacDonald, whose family grows grain at Richard, Sask. The former chair of the defunct Saskatchewan Women in Agriculture Network said the feeling in society in general is “it’s not a male issue, so it’s not important.”
She said that will change only when men realize that it’s worth their while to deal with different concerns. But right now, no one wants to give up their power, she said.
Two Saskatchewan farm women who are also Conservative MPs, Carol Skelton and Lynne Yelich, were not available to comment on the study.
