SASKATOON – Farm organizations and government can’t find enough farm women to work on various committees, say the provincial agriculture minister and a Sask-atchewan Wheat Pool official.
The pool’s second vice-president Barry Senft and Eric Upshall told a lunch gathering marking the start of Saskatchewan’s Farm Women’s Week last week that few farm women are willing to sit on various committees.
“There seems to be a limited number available,” Upshall said.
Senft noted the wheat pool had its first female delegate 15 years ago, but now has only three women out of 131 delegates. Of the 4,000 spaces available on wheat pool local committees, women occupy 227, up from 103 in 1981.
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However, when the government made a special effort to get more women, as it did on last year’s provincial review of farm safety nets, it was able to come up with nine women, said the assistant deputy minister of agriculture, Terry Scott.
Noreen Johns, secretary of the Saskatchewan Women’s Agricultural Network, said the Canadian network has developed a talent bank listing farm women and their skills and interests. But it is not being used. SWAN put together a similar list about eight years ago and Scott encouraged SWAN to deal directly with his department to ensure women’s names are available.
Shelley Thompson, a wheat pool agriculture economist, urged SWAN members to seek out positions beyond the network.
“It’s a good group,” she said, “but SWAN has only one seat at the table. Get elected to other groups.”
But women have made gains in other areas. John Stewart, dean of the agriculture college at the University of Saskatchewan, said this is the first year when the college has had more women than men start a degree or diploma program.
The National Farmers Union, which has an affirmative action policy, has an executive with more women than men. NFU member Shannon Storey said more farm organizations should pattern themselves after the NFU by deliberately recruiting, supporting and developing women at the grassroots, district and top levels. She also urged groups to widen their view of what makes a farm issue.
“When you can’t get child care, when one partner must work off the farm,” that’s an issue for the farm family as a whole, not just one of the partners, Storey said.
Even an 85-year-old organization like the Saskatchewan Women’s Institutes can update itself, said its president Alison Wilson. She told the luncheon the SWI is planning to hold workshops in conjunction with the federal Women’s Entrepreneur Centre to teach business skills to farm women “who want to work where they are and not go to a city.” She noted the women’s institute movement started 99 years ago in Canada to provide practical education to farm women. Women’s institutes is “one of our best exports to the rest of the world.”
