Being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field, I've heard just about every reaction possible to my chosen career path:
- "Oh...a farmer?" from my disappointed former teachers.
- "It's just such a hard life" from my mom and other relatives.
- "That's amazing! I completely support you!" from people who are overly excited by the fact that I, a woman, am "breaking into a man's field".
- "Some people are saying that you shouldn't be doing this, because it's a man's job" from someone who completely supports me.
- Medical professionals usually launch into a long list of questions relating to farm life (exposure to mold, exposure to different animals, air quality, etc.) to get to the bottom of my health problems.
- City folks usually launch into a conversation full of questions about the safety of their food, and eventually ask if it's unusual for a woman to be a farmer.
My two favourite are these:
- "You'll be a wonderful farmer" (no gushing, no admonitions, just simplicity) from a long-time friend.
- No reaction at all. Just plain farming talk from other farmers and agriculture professionals.
I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about what it is really like to be a female farmer, beyond my standard monosyllabic replies to the typical reactions listed above. In an attempt to order my thoughts and (maybe) avoid ranting, I have organized this discussion into 4 basic topics.
1. Dealing with People's Perceptions
I tire very easily of dealing with the perceptions behind many of the reactions to my chosen career, hence my use of monosyllabic answers. I'm going to give you, my readers, a once-in-a-lifetime look into what goes on in my mind when I see and hear such reactions.
My disappointed teachers are really thinking that I'm far too smart to be a farmer and am wasting the academic talent they spent so many years cultivating. I wish they knew how mentally taxing farming really is and that this is a career path that challenges me physically and mentally every day. In addition to that, this is a field full of innovation (pun intended), so why shouldn't farmers be "smart"?
The people who tell me that it's a hard life are the ones who care most about me. They want me to have a better life than they had, with more opportunities, and less trouble. I get it. I grew up in this life and I know how hard it is. It does scare me to think of the financial risks, the physical dangers, and the emotional toll this life will have for me. It's my choice, though. Yes, it is a hard life, but it is also a good life.
The super supportive people are, quite possibly, the most annoying. Really, you want to support me? How exactly are you going to do that (unless, of course, we go into business together or I use you as an educated sounding board to bounce crazy ideas off of)? If you mean that you'll argue my side when others argue that I shouldn't be doing a man's job, please don't do that. You haven't spent hours agonizing, searching, thinking, and praying about whether this is right or not. I have. If someone wants to question my role in society to my face, I will answer them as respectfully as I can, bringing all of those hours of working things out between me and God with me to the discussion.
The people who say I shouldn't be doing a man's job have an incredibly stunted view of society and history. Unfortunately, these people almost never actually say this to my face, so I never get to show them that I'm not some subversive who wants men and women to be exactly the same in this world. I believe that men and women should have different roles in society. Yes, we should have equal rights, but we have different roles and different things to bring to the table, as a group, and as individuals. However, I have searched and searched and have failed to find any example of men and women having different roles in agriculture. I studied history in university before heading to an agricultural college. To the great chagrin of my professors, I always chose to study some aspect of agriculture whenever the class was given free rein to choose a topic for a term paper. In completing my research for these papers, I discovered that before the Industrial Revolution, women and men had virtually the same roles in agriculture. Women have been farming for millennia! With the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, agriculture was given the gift of machinery to make the work easier and more efficient. Unfortunately, the machinery was too heavy for the average woman to be able to use. Now that technology has advanced to where machinery, etc. is more easily handled, women are able to re-enter the field of agriculture. Agriculture, as far as I can see, was never meant to be primarily a man's domain. And yes, I checked the Bible. If you want to argue this point on theological grounds, please check out Proverbs 31:16-17. That's all I'm going to say about that.
You can read about the other 3 topics relating to being a female farmer here:
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