It's time for women to become more involved in the decision-making processes of farming in Ireland, IFA equality officer Mary Carroll tells Seán Mac Connell, Agriculture Correspondent
'Close your eyes and picture a farmer," asks Mary Carroll. "I bet you did not picture a woman." Carroll was right. Her experiment in calling up a mental image of a farmer invariably means that all of us conjure up the image of a man. That is despite the fact that 10 per cent of Ireland's farms are owned by women and there are thousands of women working on Irish farms on a daily basis.
But the image of farming, not just in Ireland, but worldwide, is a male one.
Carroll's job for the past two years has been to change that perception and to get Irish farm women more involved in farm politics and the decision-making process.
Driven by a desire for justice and equality rather than feminism, Carroll is not a separatist but believes in partnership.
Perhaps Carroll's best qualification for the job of Equality Officer at the male-dominated Irish Farmers Association (IFA) is that she is the only girl from a Co Laois farm.
Growing up in rural Laois she quickly learned the traditions and attitudes of her local community towards women. The perceived wisdom in rural Ireland was that their role was to allow the men get on with the real work and their job was to provide the support for that work.
They were not to inherit the land they worked and they were definitely not going to be involved in farm politics. That was "man's work".
"My family was no different from any other in the area. Women were just not visible on the scene," she says.
"That is how it was then and how it is still over most parts of the country where - not only in farming, but in the areas which service farming - these attitudes remain," she says.
A stint in the Department of Agriculture in Northern Ireland and working as a country management adviser in the North, confirmed that women were expected to be as invisible there as in the rest of the island.
"We are no better or no worse here in Ireland than in the rest of Europe, with the exception of some of the Nordic countries where women have been recognised and empowered mainly through the social welfare codes," she says.
"There was even a farm leader in Norway who happened to be a woman, but overall, from what I can gather, women in agriculture are more or less treated the same all over Europe."
Two years ago Carroll took over the job of managing the IFA's programme to increase participation by farm women through the Equality for Women Programme under the National Development Plan.
That was shortly after the Department of Agriculture and Food issued its Advisory Report on the Role of Women in Agriculture in 2000.
Last September, she says, the Department's publication Agenda 2000-Mid Term Review - An Explanatory Guide, still made only one reference to the fact that a farmer just might be a woman.
"Throughout the publication, the reference were 'when a man tranfers ownership to his son'. It was the least gender-proofed publication I have seen in a long time," she says. "There was one reference, on page 15 to a 'son/daughter' and that was only 18 months after producing a document to promote the role of women in agriculture.
"Basically, I want women in agriculture to be taken seriously and not be treated like they have no role other than making the tea and sandwiches for the working men."
"What that document represented was symptomatic of a wider picture throughout agriculture which goes all the way back to the farms," she says.
However, her last two years as Equality Officer with IFA have not been without success. Last autumn nearly 600 women crowded into Croke Park to promote the cause of women in agriculture. They called on the Government to establish a "Women In Agriculture" section within the Department of Agriculture and Food charged with driving forward the agenda for women in agriculture.
They demanded that the unit would lead the development and implementation of viable strategies and policies in full cooperation with every other relevant Department and Agency. These included PRSI for assisting spouses, proper maternity benefit packages for farmers' wives, carers' allowances, and joint herd numbers.
This so-called "Croke Park Declaration" has moved the agenda forward and the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, is supportive of the move.
She has had successes too within the IFA by "badgering" women to become involved in the running of the organisation. "Five per cent of the membership of IFA are women and there are growing numbers of women becoming involved," she says.
But, with more and more farmers' wives and partners now working off the land, she feels women on the land believe the initiative may be 10 years too late. "There is an element of truth in that because so many people are involved in part-time farming, but the involvement and the love of the land remains," she says.
Carroll, who would like to have a farm of her own some day, is prepared to criticise women too for accepting the way things are rather than changing them.
"I know it can be difficult as a woman to walk into a room full of men but there are enough confident women around the place to begin this process."
"For too long women have accepted the status quo and the time has now come to change that and the old attitudes. All the attitudes in farming have to change so why not ours?" she asks.
Carroll finds that farmers are well able to accept professional women with whom they have contact on their farms, the female vet or instructor.
"There is a good attitude in IFA as well and I know they want more women to become involved, and not just at the top levels," she says.
"It can be argued that women are not given the skills necessary to farm by their families and most young girls are excluded from tasks like driving tractors or handling machinery. That was one of the issues which came up at the meeting in Croke Park and this is being addressed by Teagasc which will give farming skills and empower women to do the farm tasks."
Carroll has drawn up a 10-point document for IFA which she will soon present to a special committee of the organisation.
"The key to getting more involvement is at branch level in the IFA where women should be made welcome," she says.
Carroll does not want any artificial gender balancing mechanisms to address the problems either inside or outside of IFA because she is convinced of the worth and benefits that increased involvement by women will bring.
Family membership of IFA, she says, would soften the male image of the 85,000-strong organisation and would go a long way towards greater involvement by women.
"I am just hoping the day may soon come when I ask someone to close their eyes and envisage a farmer and that person pictures a woman."