Prime Movers sector report: Farm women

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Any woman inspired to go farming by the fictional Australian television programme would get a rude awakening.

Tall, good looking, intelligent and vivacious, Louise Collingwood wouldn't look out of place mixing it with the McLeod's Daughters cast, but chances are she'd have the sheep shorn and the cattle drenched before they'd emerged from their star trailers for the angst-ridden drama of the day.

But we have seen her on our televisions briefly providing a realistic model of and for farming women. Collingwood had a starring role in the toughest test in the farming calendar for male or female - the Young Farmer of the Year contest.

In the final, broadcast in July, 29-year-old Collingwood excelled. She was only the second woman to compete in a grand final in the contest's 35-year history, and when she came in second was the first to get such a high placing.

Is Collingwood unique, or does she represent a new breed of rural woman?

A few New Zealand women have always farmed on their own account, though by far the majority is in partnership with their husbands or other family.

Deirdre Shaw, Otago University assistant lecturer in geography, has just published her PhD thesis on farming women's organisations. Her masters' thesis, published in 1993, was on the work of farming women.

From a Waikato dairy farming family, Shaw studied women's organisations in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Here her focus was Rural Women NZ, the Network for Women in Dairying, and Positively Clutha Women. She investigated the strategies the groups use to provide women with leadership opportunities.

She found that there were six main "identities" for farm women. Three dominated - the service-oriented carer, or wife or mother; the farm helper; and the community worker. Less prevalent were being a farmer, an industry "actor", or an off-farm worker. The recognition Collingwood got for her efforts as a woman in agriculture was rarer than her ability to do a range of farming tasks, Shaw said. Women were often reluctant to say publicly that they were farmers, and be acknowledged that way, she said.

In fact, Collingwood is not a farmer and never has been, though she hopes to rectify that one day. She is the only daughter of Wellingtonians Sue and David Money, respectively a secondary school teacher and quantity surveyor. Her brother, Chris, is a Treasury policy analyst.

Collingwood grew up in the city where she attended Queen Margaret College, a school now so proud of her success that it has invited her back to address its crop of students. She is eager to go.

"I hope to give women encouragement to look at a farming or agricultural industry career," she said.

Collingwood always liked the countryside. If there was farmland to look at she was not one to whine the car-bound child's lament - "are we there yet?" She rode horses from the age of nine and wanted a career as a veterinarian.

She was an unsuccessful candidate among the hordes that applied for vet school and instead studied for a degree in applied science, majoring in animal science, at Massey University.

In her first year she did practical course work for a Wairarapa dairy farmer who had been an agricultural consultant. When she had completed her degree Collingwood decided to pursue the same line, working for five years as a dairy industry Dexcel consulting officer before switching last year to business planning and human resource product development for the same company.



Farm consulting proved rewarding in several ways. She met her husband, Tony, then a fellow consulting officer, and made many friends in her patch stretching from Te Awamutu to Taumarunui.

Collingwood joined the Te Kawa west Young Farmers Club, and now chairs the organisation's Waikato-Bay of Plenty region which she represented in the Young Farmer of the Year contest.

She'd watched the competition on television each year and began competing at local level in 2000, immediately scoring a creditable fifth in the regional final. At her second attempt in 2001 she came second in the regional final to Gene Roberts who went on to win the national event. That gave Collingwood a huge boost to her confidence. She was well and truly hooked. Last year, she again came second to the regional winner.

Meanwhile, with a number of women competing and Collingwood shining among the male contenders, the organisers examined the competition to see whether any event discriminated against women.

Last year, 14 women competed at the competition's district level, five at regional and one, Collingwood, in the final.

"It has to be about intelligence not brute strength." Collingwood said. "It's to their [organisers] credit that they didn't find anything to change."

The contest requires contestants to complete a range of tasks from practical, on-farm jobs like draughting, drenching, pruning a fruit tree and dismantling a set of portable sheep yard,s to writing a business plan and making a speech.

The network of farming friends built up in Collingwood's consulting days paid off. With their help she honed her skills in fencing, welding, gas cutting, shearing, ploughing - anything that might come up in the contest.



For the record, Otago-Southland representative Robert Kempthorne won the contest, taking home $85,000 worth of prizes and paying a generous compliment to Collingwood.

She'd done herself proud, he said of Collingwood's 273 points to his 285.

She collected $18,000 in prizes, including fertiliser whose use has proved a tad problematic on the Collingwood's Te Awamutu town section. It will be sold, but if Collingwood returns for her last chance at the grand final cloak, she may be better positioned to use fertiliser.

She and Tony, now a Westpac agribusiness manager, have discussed getting their own farm. There is no debate about who would be wearing the farm trousers. It will be Louise - and be wary anyone turning up at the farmhouse door and asking for "the man of the farm."

"Whatever they are selling they won't get a sale from me," Collingwood warns.

She has had a taste of such discrimination already. In her preparations for the contest Collingwood spent three days at the Mystery Creek National Agricultural Fieldays checking out machinery - rather obviously crawling under it and poking about.

In three days only three people treated her as a potential customer.

Collingwood said a research project at the Fieldays showed that men check out the equipment first and then consult their wives or partners. The woman - often the one who balances the books and knows what can be afforded - gives the final word.

"They can miss out on sales by not serving women," Collingwood says.

Shaw's 10-year-old thesis shows little has changed. In 1993, she wrote that women felt they were only accepted as farmers if they proved themselves to be as knowledgeable and skilled as their male counterparts. Men's ability, on the other hand, was accepted without question.



Out of the 500 farms she visited as a consulting officer, Collingwood said around seven were run by women either on their own account or because their husband worked full-time off the farm.

She believes there are a few, younger women in the farming sector that will take up the challenge of running farms but that mostly women's roles on farms tend to be invisible.

They may start out working on the land but on family farms, once children arrive, they move indoors to combine child rearing with tasks such as accounting, budgeting and ordering supplies. Women, too, tend to be conspicuous by their absence in headlining farming organisations and businesses.

Shaw said newer groups like the Network for Women in Dairying encouraged women to participate in the male-dominated agri-industry, while older organisations like Rural Women NZ encouraged leadership in the community or within the group.

There appeared to be a generational change occurring. When the children of the older farm women left home the women tended to get involved in community work rather than on the farm or in their industry. Younger farm women were increasingly taking roles on the farm and industry, Shaw said.

The younger networks were also encouraging women "not to act as a man" but to bring in their female qualities and highlight social issues such as family farming rather than concentrate on strictly economic issues.

Shaw's research suggested that women who already had industry leadership roles felt that there had been little to deter them from their goals but they recognised that less determined or forceful personalities could find it harder.

Some identified the "old boys' attitude", or a closet male network, as a hurdle. Shaw said other research confirmed the existence of a male coterie - known as male-streaming - which enabled men to be "volunteered" for boards by their peers rather than be elected on merit.

Lack of support from a critical extended family, no childcare, difficult meeting times and a lack of confidence were also cited as barriers to women aiming to take roles outside home and community.

They are issues that need addressing if women are to make a greater contribution to the agricultural sector.