Farming: A Man's World? Yes.

I just read an article about actresses being asked questions that male actors would never be asked.  Next I skimmed an article about the use of male identifiers in the English language (i.e. mankind, guys, etc.).  After that I read an article about a Fox news anchor who criticize a colleague for telling women how to get a husband at the Masters.  I really don't know how I find this stuff.  This is procrastination at its best, I suppose.

Those articles got me thinking about myself and how I act and think.  In a previous post I talked about how I don't often let the men in my life help me with tasks.  Since then I've tried letting them help me more often.  I haven't gone soft and let them do everything, mind you.  I just let them carry the heavy stuff sometimes.  The other night the IVCF group at college had our end of the year wrap-up party.  I was in charge of getting groceries for supper.  I had already packed all of the groceries from the store to my truck, from my truck to my fridge, and then back from my fridge to my truck later in the day.  By the time I got to the farm where our party was, I was not about to touch those boxes and cooler again.  The girls who were with me were more than willing to take the boxes for me, but I stopped them and called a couple of the guys over instead to carry the stuff.  Why did I do that?  Was I taking advantage of chivalry?  Was I advancing the idea that women are weak and shouldn't have to do manual labour even if we want to?  I don't know.  All I know is that I wasn't about to carry those boxes again and that I figured I'd get the men to help with the heavy lifting one last time before they graduate.

I was pondering this event after reading those articles and that got me thinking about other posts I've written about farming as a woman.  I write rather a lot about that, don't I?  Curiously, those are some of my most popular posts...  Anyways, to get back to the topic at hand, I began to think about various arguments about women farming.  The phrase "a man's world" stuck in my mind and I immediately dismissed it.  After all, I've written at least one history paper that I remember about the important role that women have played in agriculture.  

After a bit more thought, though, I concluded that I may, perhaps, be wrong.  In fact, I am now convinced that farming now is a man's world.  That's not to say that women don't belong in agriculture.  Rather, I mean that agriculture is built for men nowadays.  My history classes have taught me that women began to be excluded from agricultural activities as technology began to make farming more efficient.  The equipment became larger and heavier, making it difficult for women, who are generally smaller and weaker than men (particularly those strapping farm boys), to operate the equipment, thus making their contributions to farming inefficient and unwanted.  Women became excluded from regular agricultural activity.  Without having to cater to the smaller size of women, companies making farm equipment continued to make it larger and more efficient.  Of course, there have always been a few women who remained involved in farming on the farm level.  However, I have found that today, most farm machinery, among other things, is built for the stature of the average man, which is a bit of a problem for a short girl like me.

I could launch into countless rants and long narratives right now to illustrate my point, but I shall attempt to resist.  Instead, I'll give a few brief examples of how short and average women are at a disadvantage using normal farm equipment.

  - On some grains bins, I can't climb to the very top because the ladder on the roof is too far away for me to reach.  Even on the ones I can get to the top of, it takes some fancy maneuvers to get my feet up onto the next rung of the ladder because they're spaced so far apart.

 - When I drive the tractor, my feet don't touch the floor.  In fact, they dangle several inches above it, even if the seat is put down as low as it goes (and that makes a very rough ride).  With my feet dangling and bouncing all day on the tractor, weighed down by my boots, my knees make sure I regret my career choice at the end of a long day.

 - I require the use of stools, step ladders, and acrobatic maneuvers I don't even realize I am capable of to reach to perform maintenance and other tasks on some equipment.  Putting twine in the baler, for example, can get rather interesting.

I won't go on.  Keep in mind that while it sounds like I am complaining, I'm really not.  Figuring out how to reach things is kind of fun sometimes.  And those grain bin ladders are just challenges that I intend to one day overcome.

Farming is a man's world because it was slowly built for men over hundreds of years.  This was not a conscious exclusion of women.  It simply came about through attempts to make farming more efficient.  However, we now have the technology to keep the efficiency and make agriculture more accessible to women, do we not?  And surely there are a few short men out there who would appreciate equipment sized to them.  I don't quite know what I'm suggesting, but perhaps there is a way to make farming more accessible to women (and short men).