Armstrong marks International Day of Rural Women with call for action on women in farming

Diana Armstrong said: “Rural women hold our communities together. In farming, in business, in schools and surgeries, in churches and clubs, they are the people who keep things going.

“There are nearly 52,000 people working on farms in Northern Ireland. Four out of five of them are down as the farmer, a partner or a spouse. Now think about what that word spouse is covering. It is the woman who reared the calves, who does the books at the kitchen table, who takes the call from the vet, who has the dinner on for whoever is in the yard. None of that puts her down as a farmer. Most of it is not paid either.

“The scale of this is already well documented. The Breaking the Grass Ceiling report found that women make up 22 per cent of the agricultural workforce but only five per cent of principal farmers. It found the number of women farmers fell by 15 per cent between 2006 and 2019. It found women make up just four per cent of participants in Business Development Groups. Seven in ten women who responded said the culture of the industry was a challenge, and two thirds were holding down a job off the farm as well.

“Nearly 180 women took the time to set out what their working lives were actually like. That was four years ago. What I want to know today is what DAERA has done with it. What has the Department put in place since? What has changed for the woman on a farm in rural Northern Ireland? If the answer is very little, then say so honestly and get on with fixing it.

“There is a harder issue underneath all of this. On a great many farms the land, the herd and the business are in one name, and it is usually not hers. A woman can give forty years to a farm and have no security in it at all. If a marriage ends, or a partnership breaks down, or there is a dispute over succession, she can find she has nothing to show for a lifetime’s work. It is rarely talked about and it needs to be.

“Rural women also carry the sharp end of problems I have raised before. There is no bus. Childcare is miles away and costs more than the job pays. Services are a drive rather than a walk.

“So today is not only about saying thank you, although I do. Recognise the work women do on family farms. Look at how women with no legal stake in the business they have built can be supported. Stop designing services on the assumption that everyone lives within reach of a bus route.

“I see the difference these women make every single day. The least they are owed is to be counted.”