Changing gender roles in Scottish farming – shifting the balance The role of women in Scotland’s agricultural sector is under the spotlight, for good reason. For a long time, there has been a lack of women in leadership posititions in the sector, under representation in leadership roles in farming organisations, cultural barriers and significant unconscious gender bias. It’s a situation the Scottish Government has been looking to redress. Based on research by The James Hutton Institute and Newcastle University the government launched the Women in Agriculture Taskforce in 2017. Now, following further research by the Hutton, the government is looking to form a leadership programme for women, through its Women in Agriculture Programme. The good news is that the latest research shows that there is change in the right direction. But, as our researchers have found, the challenges can be deeply embedded. Succession planning on Scottish farms One area that has been highlighted as a particular barrier is succession planning on farms – who gets to inherit. Professor Lee-Ann Sutherland – a social scientist who was brought up on a farm in Canada – says that research shows that women often get overlooked in preference to male siblings, from an early age, when it comes to inheritance planning on Scotland’s farms. But when a woman is chosen as a successor, it is a critical turning point as they are then much more likely to make a balanced choice over who then takes over from them. These findings, outlined in the journal Rural Sociology last month, found that succession isn’t the only way that women enter farming – they also enter farming by marrying a farmer; leaving the farm they were brought up on to take on another farm; or become a farmer following a previous career. But that these other routes usually result in them having more marginal or home-based role or on smaller farms, rather than the larger family farm, due to the high cost of entering into farming. Farm sucessors identified from childhood “Our research shows that succession planning is a critical turning point for achieving the aims of increasing the role of women on farms in Scotland,” says Professor Sutherland. “Potential successors are often identified as children and specifically trained or offered opportunities to develop social networks and skills, making their, often male, succession, seem like an automatic next step, while others, typically women, accept it as a natural order of things. “This isn’t to say women aren’t encouraged into agriculture. They often move into higher education and have successful careers within agriculture, but not as successors to the family farm, underscoring the dominance and image of men as farmers.” The most recent Scottish Agricultural Census says 40% of farm owner occupiers are women. But when asked to identify a “primary farmer”, just 8% of farms in Scotland identified women, according to Eurostat. This is close to the bottom 14 Hutton Highlights
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