2024 or 1974? The treatment of women in Australian agriculture.

This Friday will be the 96th anniversary of International Women’s Day in Australia. It is a day to reflect on the progress we’ve made towards achieving true equality for women in their workplaces or in the case of Australian agriculture – how far we’ve yet to go.

Anyone who has the pleasure of following me on Twitter (or X if you prefer) may have witnessed a recent ‘discussion’ about the use of promotional models at an agricultural clearing sale. Regardless of how you may feel about that particular choice of entertainment, what we should all be concerned about is how women were treated when they chose to speak out about how it made them feel.

WA Farmers CEO Trevor Whittington said in a 2018 article (yep 6 years ago) “In the past, agriculture has had a reputation of hard men performing hard physical work on the land. The contribution and involvement of women in working and building farming businesses was largely invisible, even though they often played an equal role…. Attitudes towards women were clearly sexist…It was not a world we are comfortable looking back on today.”

Apparently?“that world is long gone, condemned to the dustbin of unacceptable sexist attitudes.? Agriculture has changed and our attitudes need to change with it, to ensure that women feel safe and comfortable working in any job anywhere.” And yet when we do speak out, we are harassed, abused, belittled, and bullied out of public spaces when we dare have an opinion.

Dr Nicole McDonald a researcher with CQ University who studies agricultural workforce attraction and retention, tried to articulate the feelings of so many of us by saying “It's disappointing that work for an ag business includes roles for women as accessories / window dressing for a tractor. The criticism is not of women who choose this work (good for them), it's of the context where this takes place & women's roles in this workplace/ industry.”

Completely fair comment, wouldn’t you think? Some got it. And some got snarky.

This isn’t a new experience for women, any woman who dares goes against the grain or tries to make meaningful systematic change in a male-dominated field has experienced the same.? But somehow, in an industry as small as ours it makes it so much worse. So much more personal, and so profoundly disappointing. Especially disappointing to those women who have to work alongside men who not only fail to see the inequalities that exist in our industry, but actively work to ensure that they remain – because they like it that way.

There’s supposed to have been an industry-wide commitment to stopping sexual harassment in the workplace and the behaviours which facilitate and excuse it – but it appears that there’s a lot of people in agriculture who didn’t get the memo. It’s no secret that we struggle to attract staff to this industry, and with attitudes like those on display recently I can’t say I blame anyone for choosing to work in another field where they will be at less risk of sexual harassment and have more chance of being taken seriously.

It’s been my personal experience that despite being one of the most rewarding places to work, agriculture is also one of the most challenging. It’s also been my experience that no one loves to tear down a successful woman in ag more than a thoroughly mediocre man. And there were plenty of them out in force on the internet this week.

One of them demanded to know why “squeaky women don’t get outraged over the big issues in agriculture?”?as if ensuring that Australian ag is a safe and supportive workplace for women isn’t a big issue. But I think that this comment is a perfect demonstration of how ugly this industry can be when you don’t toe the male-endorsed line.

We’ve had gaslighting, insulting, name calling and even gold-plated mansplaining to several women in agriculture about their experiences. Obviously, women wanting a workplace & industry free of harassment and female exploitation makes some people very uncomfortable.

And that’s a problem.

Because while ever men are comfortable treating women with disrespect, things will never change. And while ever other men (and women) not only turn a blind eye to but actively encourage these attitudes and behaviours they will continue. And that’s what we’ve just witnessed. Women dared speak up about something that made them disappointed in their industry and not only did the men come out in force to decry their opinions as invalid, unfounded, and just plain wrong – they failed to see that the problem was not the promo girls, or what they were wearing – it was the men’s attitude to the women who complained, questioned, and explained their experience of the industry.

Women dared to speak up about something happening in our industry that made us uncomfortable, and we were told loud & clear that the only time our opinion is relevant is when it aligns with the men who enjoy the exploitation of women in the workplace. We said loud & clear “we don’t like this” and men said back “we don’t care – and also you’re wrong”.

Not an ounce of empathy for the women they work with or any consideration as to how it makes our industry look to policy makers, customers, consumers, potential employees or the general public. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt – it’s refusing to acknowledge that the actions of a few can make all of agriculture look really, really bad.

So, on this International Women’s Day I encourage all women in Australian agriculture to review how far we’ve come in their struggle for equality and how far we have yet to go and to unite, network and mobilise for meaningful change.