Overcoming prejudice and finding a community - being a woman in nature-friendly farming
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By the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN)
For many people, the word ‘farmer’ conjures up the image of an older man in wellies sitting on a tractor. It’s a stereotype that is not without foundation. Agricultural workforce statistics for 2024 showed that just 16% of farmholders in the UK are women and the average age of a farmholder is 61.
Within the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), though, female farmers are determined to highlight and challenge the barriers women can still face to careers in agriculture, while also celebrating their achievements and encouraging others to follow in their footsteps.
As a young woman entering agriculture with no previous farming background, NFFN farmer Elise Sutton said she found comparatively few obstacles to being accepted in the Wiltshire farming community when she began working as a stockperson with Longhorn cattle on a Natural England farm on Salisbury Plain.
“I certainly didn’t encounter many barriers and I didn’t feel unwelcome,” Elise says. “The first time you go into the pub and all the local boys are there you do wonder if you belong. But I found I had really good conversations and they were really interested in our farm. They asked questions about our nature-friendly approach and I would ask why they were doing things as well.”
For Ruth Ashton-Shaw, who farms at Low Auldgirth Steading in Dumfries and Galloway, the move into the rural economy from her previous career in design in Manchester was not such smooth sailing. “It was a massive culture shock coming into farming from that urban world that was very fast-paced, very diverse, always looking for the next thing,” she recalls.
“Projects in design would rarely last more than six months, whereas in farming people are working on an annual basis and making five-year plans. Everything takes longer and moves more slowly, and I do think that means attitudes are more reserved and move more slowly as well.”
Ruth, who is now an NFFN Scotland vice chair, has certainly experienced her fair share of prejudice and problematic assumptions as a woman in farming.
“One of the most infuriating things I encounter is people turning up at the farm, usually delivery drivers or sales reps, and asking to speak to either my husband or my dad. Ours is a family farm but I’m most definitely the one in charge of the farming,” she says. “I usually say that they can speak to them if they want, but they’re not going to have a clue about farming. You do get people looking at you with a raised eyebrow, thinking there must be a man with a chequebook behind me to support this. It also puts untold pressure on you when you insist that you’re going to be the one unloading the hay or whatever and have stamped your authority on a situation. You feel you can’t make a mistake and there’s no room for error. You feel like you have to be better than average to prove you’re worthy of your position. As someone running a family farm you also get some very awkward conversations that stop dead when you say you don’t want to have kids. There’s this expectation that you’re going to have children frolicking in the fields with the lambs. We’ve actually been turned down for publicity and media appearances because we don’t have children and they say they want to do something more family-oriented. I have to say that quite often this kind of thing has come from other women, so I do think we perpetuate some unhelpful ideas about ourselves sometimes.”
NFFN farmer Abby Allen, director of farming for Pipers Farm in Devon, says she has generally found the regenerative agriculture community to be extremely supportive, with a number of female role models who were particularly welcoming and generous with their knowledge and time when she started out. However, she says being a female farmer can be viewed both positively and negatively.
“You do get experiences where people overlook you and you feel you really have to work to get your voice heard,” she says. “I’ve had meetings where people just haven’t recognised that I’m the decision-maker and after an hour’s discussion ask when the chaps will be brought in. However, sometimes I find that being a woman in farming can work in another way. My partner will have very different conversations with farmers than I do and I do think gender is a part of it. There can be a lot of macho attitudes in farming with people needing to paint particular pictures of how things are, whereas with me they feel they can let their guards down a little and talk more frankly, openly or honestly.”
However, Abby says that when it comes to day-to-day, practical farming, women still face far more barriers than men to simply being able to get on with the job. Her experiences suggest agriculture has many of the problems with data and design gender biases that author Caroline Criado-Perez identified in her celebrated book Invisible Women.
“Being a woman and doing the hands-on work on a farm is challenging,” Abby says. “We have a really old tractor on our farm and it has clearly been designed for a man. I’m five foot four and I can’t reach the pedals. A lot of tools are a real pain to use if you’re not six foot or taller. Once I put a picture of myself on Instagram soaking wet from working outside and a farmer said I should get some overtrousers. I replied that it was funny he should say that. I have three pairs but they’re all unisex and I have to roll them all the way up to fit me, so it’s less hassle for me to just get wet and not bother wearing them. I am a very independent person and it really annoys me that tools and kit make it harder to do my job as a woman.”
Elise says she has seen indications that things are getting better from her own experiences, but warned that there are still major challenges to becoming a farmer, something she has seen both as a woman and not coming from a farming family.
“When I went to university the course was about 70% men and 30% women, but when I went back to talk to students six years later it was closer to 50-50,” she says. “I’ve been lucky to meet so many amazing women in farming, and the nature-friendly farming community has been a lovely safe space where I’ve felt welcomed and like I belonged. There are far more young women now in agricultural education, in farming and in sectors like conservation. But getting hold of farmland is extremely difficult. You have to work really hard to get that tenancy or that foot on the ladder, and you need open-minded farmers and landowners who will give you the opportunity. When I’ve spoken to young female farmers on work experience placements and at college, it has sometimes been clear to me they haven’t been supported or understood, but when I’ve talked to them about how I’ve done it they’ve opened up and become more confident and comfortable. It can be hard for them to feel inspired or encouraged in very male-oriented settings.”
Ruth also says she has seen improvements in almost a decade of being involved in farming.
“People are starting to realise their stereotypical ideas of what farms and farmers look like aren’t correct any more because the whole industry is changing,” she says. “In a lot of ways I’m doing things differently: I’m a woman, I’m farming regeneratively and I work with native breeds. That can initially make people a bit standoffish, but then they see that I am a ‘proper farmer’ and I do ‘proper farm things’. Over time you become accepted and you fit into your local community, finding your space. There has been a good deal of progress, especially with women taking senior roles in farming organisations and doing a really good job. It’s hopefully paving the way for mindset changes.”
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