Try it yourself. Check it out with women in agriculture talking about gender issues in industry. Find them informally through social media or find them through a women’s agricultural organization, of which there are several across Canada today.
Then ask them what kind of response they get when they talk about gender equality in agriculture.
Here’s a great answer that they are sure to inform. “What do you mean that women are underrepresented in the industry, or that they are not paid equitably? And what is that of discrimination and sexism? That no longer exists ”.
They are comments that you hear all the time, and they come not only from men, but also from women.
So who is right?
Well, the people who really study the subject say that the old gender issues are still with us. There is no way they are a thing of the past. In fact, many women still face barriers to advancement and equal participation on the farm and throughout the agricultural industry in general.
“We have learned through observation and data analysis that agriculture is still a male-dominated environment,” says Laura Lazo, co-founder of MWAF (Manitoba Women in Food and Agriculture), a group that seeks to develop careers and business opportunities to support and do advance women, including those from underrepresented groups.
Gender issues exist, but that doesn’t mean that we all acknowledge them. “Sometimes the men and women who told me that men and women had equal opportunities and similar incomes changed their minds when I presented the statistics to them,” says Lazo. “The disparity between gender income and job roles is present and real. All you have to do is look at the publicly available statistics to see that. “
Although at postsecondary education 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 also fewer women in high-level positions in the industry,” says Lazo. “It’s what we call the leaky pipe: women fall on the road.”
That aligns with data from the Canadian Council for Agricultural Human Resources (CAHRC) showing that more than 90 percent of women experience barriers to reaching managerial positions in the industry.
Meat Business Women
Across the pond in the UK, a segment of the agricultural industry has done the hard work of figuring out exactly how many women work in the meat industry.
It turns out that her work is documenting a pattern that occurs over and over again in agriculture and on farms, including in Canada.
Meat Business Women has commissioned an extensive research study that provides a disturbing numerical baseline. Globally, 36 percent of people working in the meat industry are women, but at the board level that drops to 14 percent. And at the CEO level, only five percent are women.
Among the unskilled workers in the industry, by contrast, 40 percent are women.
Recognized by the UN, Meat Business Women started in England six years ago but has since grown to become a global networking group for women working in the meat industry with local committees in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. , and a growing number of individual and corporate members around the world.
Critics who expect the group to be fiercely vegetarian will be disappointed. The same will be true of anyone who expects them to be revolutionaries of any other kind. Instead, the group’s vision is absolutely pro-industry: “Defend 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 industry for over 20 years, Meat Business Women intends to help achieve this as a group of global professional networks for women working in the meat industry.
“Our mission is to inspire others to see the meat industry in a different light, show the amazing roles that exist and be transparent about what the meat industry has to offer,” says Ryan.
Today, Meat Business Women has more than 7,000 followers on LinkedIn and other social media channels, with members throughout the supply chain, including producers, processors, retailers, and foodservice. More than 5,000 people have attended its events around the world, and the number increases as it offers more virtual programs and events.
But still, he has a great challenge ahead.
Women’s position on the corporate ladder
“The data clearly shows that industries with more gender balance and diversity are more profitable,” says Ryan. “And for industries like ours that normally operate on very low margins, why wouldn’t you want that? In addition, organizations with more balance make better business decisions, are more agile and have better governance ”.
The arguments for gender and ethnic cultural diversity in corporate leadership are strong. According to Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters Prepared by McKinsey & Company in the UK, diversity is good for profitability. It compared the gender diversity of executive teams at companies that scored in the top 25 percent for profitability with those in the bottom 25 percent. It found that various companies were 25% more likely to have an above-average profitability in 2019. That represents an increase of 21% in 2017 and 15% in 2014.
There is also a linear correlation with higher rendering and higher performance. The report says: “Companies with more than 30 percent female executives were more likely to outperform companies in which this percentage ranged from 10 to 30, and in turn, these companies were more likely to outperform those with even fewer female executives , or nothing”.
But the fact is, the meat industry can be a tough sell for women. Research from Meat Business Women found that many people still assume the industry is macho, physically demanding, and a difficult environment to work for.
Of the female agricultural college students, 55% reported having little or no knowledge of the sector when choosing a career, and 37% believed they would face barriers to success due to their gender.
Your preconceptions are in line with reality. For women, the meat industry has a career ladder that is missing some crucial rungs.
If women don’t climb the ladder, it’s not because they take time off for their families, research shows. Instead, it’s because these companies insist that their CEOs have a strong operating record. But these companies do not hire women for operational roles.
And because they don’t hire women for operational roles, they don’t spend time or energy looking at how operational jobs could best suit women.
“Women are filling positions in quality control, marketing, finance, research and development and human resources, but those are not the positions that take us to the top,” says Ryan. “It is important that we make operational roles attractive to female talent so that we have the opportunity to enter the organic pipeline.”
To that end, the group recently launched a campaign called “She looks like me”, a series of videos showing women in different roles in the meat industry.
“The meat industry can be very anonymous,” says Ryan. “Creating female role models, so that women can see people who are like them, is very important.”
Where are the numbers for Canada?
Meanwhile, it is difficult to monitor for gender equity in Canadian agriculture because the statistics simply do not exist. No one has a clear picture of the roles women play in all segments of the industry.
MariJo Patino, co-founder of MWAF, is an agricultural economist and currently runs an independent research consultancy based in Winnipeg. Patiño has spent a lot of time going through all the data scattered across various research, reports, and statistics on agriculture, and says there is little information in terms of actual gender and pay ratios, or where there are gaps or challenges that need to be fixed. managed.
“There are more than two million people working in the Canadian agricultural system, and we don’t know how many of them are women,” says Patino. “Are they doing the same things as their male counterparts and are they being paid the same? If there is a pay gap, how much is it? ”
There are no comprehensive answers, due to how the data is produced and compiled. MWAF is seeking funding to be able to work with Statistics Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to analyze occupational and income gender data to develop information resources that the industry can use to develop human resource initiatives focused on attracting diversity.