| Women in Agriculture |
Tape #331 - Women in Leadership
...to the Administrators Office, i.e., my office. Congress has also given the secretary and
the secretary ... who has delegated it to my office as responsibility, the
oversight of all of these research and promotion and marketing order boards,
which is going to be the gist of my presentation this afternoon.
I would first like to thank LeAnn Powell of the US Department of
Agriculture and those who assisted her for the outstanding performance in
organizing this conference. I also
would like to applaud those who created this annual conference, and it looks
like it’s a very successful conference up to now. I’m sure it provides the opportunity for women in agriculture
from around the world to come together to share and learn with other and those
of us honored to be addressing you. No
doubt each of you will find this week to be invaluable. You will take back with you to your own
countries knowledge and insights you have gained from meeting with your
counterparts from other nations. It is
my goal today to provide you with an understanding of how the United States
Department of Agriculture and the AG Industry cooperate to promote and market
various commodities. To research new
ways to produce them and use them and to stabilize markets. I will emphasize that women have an
expanding and important role to play in the various boards and committees that
carry out these cooperative efforts.
I’d like to encourage those of you from this country to seek on
opportunities to serve on these boards and committees. And I would like to suggest that women in
agriculture world-wide seek out similar opportunities in their own
nations.
Let me first speak with regards to research and promotion boards. In the United States there are two types of
government authorized panels that offer opportunities for women to help expand
markets for agricultural products and to help ensure a stable marketplace. These panels are research and promotion
boards and marketing order of administrative committees. There are non-government organizations, such
as Farmer Coops that also offer opportunities for women to participate
actively, but I’ll leave those for discussion at another time. Government authorized research and promotion
boards have developed here in the past several decades to expand markets for
various agricultural commodities and to promote research into the production
and expanded use of these commodities.
These are boards for fruits and vegetables such as potatoes, mushrooms,
and others and for meats including beef and pork and for commodities such as
milk, cotton and so on. The boards are
created at the request of commodity producers, processors and marketers. With some exceptions, research and promotion
boards were financed through an assessments, which are also known as check
offs, these check offs are monies paid into the research and promotion program
by commodity producers, handlers, processors, and importers. The amount of money paid in is based on the
dollar amount or the quantity of a commodity involved in any transaction of
that commodity, be it pounds of potatoes or head of cattle. For example beef transactions are assessed
at the rate of one dollar per head of cattle involved in the transaction. And it should be clear, it is one dollar
every time that it changes hands. In
other words, that head of cattle or steer changes hands three times between the
time that it left the ranch and it’s slaughtered at a processing plant, that
cow generated three dollars. Research
and promotion board activities are used to promote a commodity and expand it’s
domestic and export markets, advertising, promotion, education, market
research, new products, and processes all help achieve a boards goals. I’m sure that all of you from the United
States are familiar with the Got Milk and the separate milk mustache
advertising campaign. I’m sure you’ve
also heard of pork - the other white meat.
That advertising campaign helped transform the image of pork in today’s
market place, and you’ve probably heard cotton - the fabric of your life. These ads continue others for other
commodities such as cheese and beef, are the work of research and promotion
boards.
I’ll briefly walk you through the process of how a research and
promotion program is set up and it’s functions. Each such program is commodity specific and based in government
and aiding legislation. Until 1996,
established a research and promotion board for a given commodity required the
US Congress to pass specific legislation to authorized board. In 1996, however, Congress granted blanket
approval for any commodity to request that the Secretary of Agriculture
implement a research and promotion program.
Most blanket approval eliminated the requirement for specific
legislation, making it a much simpler process to establish research and
promotion programs. I just might
mention that just last week a group of avocado growers came to the secretary in
my office to begin the process of establishing a national avocado research and
promotion board. The process begins
when representation of a specific commodity’s industry requests that a research
and promotion program be established.
Our Secretary of Agriculture then issues an order based on industry
proposals and requests comment on the proposal. The order defines the size of the board and the procedures it
will follow, and specifies check off rates. Usually, though, not always, a
referenda of the affected commodity industry is required prior to the
implementation of the program. It’s not
required prior to the implementation a referenda is required at some point to
approve program continuation. Our
referenda is simply a vote of all eligible producers, handlers or importers,
depending on how the order is written, and generally requires a majority of the
people voting as well as a majority of the volume in marketplace represented by
the affirmative votes. With an eye on
diversity of membership the Secretary of Agriculture, Ben Glickman, appoints
members of the boards from a list of nominees.
The Department of Agriculture specifically, my agency, the Agricultural
Marketing Service, oversees the boards and assures that the board complies with
the authorizing legislation and regulations.
The boards play a critical role in the vitality and growth of commodity
markets both domestic and foreign and improve the quality and expend the uses
of their respective commodities. The
programs collect a check off payments and use them to conduct research and
promotion efforts. Those who pay the
check off establish and reaffirm the research and promotion programs by
referendum voting. The program can
either be terminated by recall referenda.
Approximately 410 million is collected each by the boards under the
oversight of my agency.
I just want to put up a listing of these boards so you have a sense of
really what the different kinds currently are in existence and the amount of
money that they generate.
Yes Ma’am.
PARTICIPANT: What did your board have to do with leadership?
SPEAKER: I’m getting into that point right now. The boards currently have very little
representation of women on them. It is
the secretary’s position, it is my office’s position, that we would like more
women in this leadership positions.
These boards, as you can see make decisions on how to spend a lot of
money. Primarily to encourage the
consumption of that particular commodity.
The way that the boards currently -- the membership of these boards are
currently appointed.
PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.
SPEAKER: The way that currently these appointments are made, is that
depending on the constitution of the board, in other words how the specific
language of the board was written, it allows certain entities to nominate
people to serve on these boards. The
Farm Bureau is one recognized entity in particular board, for example. The State Department Commissioner of
Agriculture is another recognized entities.
So, what I’m saying is that I think women, in this country at least,
that have these boards and commissions in place should begin to exercise more
of voice more of a role more of a participation in the most basic of items that
we have in our lives, and that is the food.
And these particular boards and commissions are quasi-government
entities, that my agency oversees. And
the advertising campaigns are generally to primarily convince women how to make
purchasing decisions when they’re walking up and down at the supermarket
hallways. So, I’m sorry that it took so
long for me to lead to this punch line, but basically that is what it is. I’ll give you an example, there’s one board,
I won’t name it specifically, that has 111 members and currently it has 7 women
as members of the board. There’s
another board that has 26 members and there are only 2 women that are members of
the board. There is a large disparity
here in the membership of these boards and the contribution that women can
exercise in how to manage these advertising promotion campaigns.
PARTICIPANT: I serve on FHA, which is another .......inaudible
........... integrating women seems to be moving along well, as far as
immigrating men - women into the usually all male board and the USDA asked by
the Farm Bureau and Stated Ag Directors to incur a man --
PARTICIPANT: Could we have the discussion at the end --
SPEAKER: She’s suggesting that we leave questions until the end because
her presentation is complimentary.
Just very quickly, yes, yes, we have done that. Okay.
So, the other point that I want to make here is that these are strictly
research and promotion boards, there’s a whole other arena called marketing
order committees that have a little bit broader definition of just research and
promotion. They include things like,
the kinds of standards and grades and packaging of how you can pack a peach or
how you can pack a grape and so forth.
With respect to women who are here from outside the US, that do not
have, some of the countries may not have these research and promotion boards, I
would encourage you to think a little bit more broadly, in the sense that you
don’t necessarily have to have boards just that are commodity specific, but I
can think of ways how you could establish a board or a commission or a
something of, similar to these entities to promote whatever women are producing
in those countries. To organize themselves
and to lead some kind of entity so that you can collect from, collectively
establish a leadership in that particular commodity, encourage the consumption
of that commodity within a specified country.
Lastly, I just want to point out that I encourage any of you that are
interested in obtaining more information with regards to these commissions and
boards and how women can play more of a leadership role in them, I’ll put an
overhead at the end here that lists most of our web pages and web sites, so that
if you’re more interested you can readily collect that information.
Thank you very much.
KATHY McGOWN: My name is Kathy McGown, and I’m from Australia. And it’s just really coincidental how my
work really compliments that presentation.
Just to point out to you, can you see the enormous amount of money going
into milk, and floored milk and also dairy.
So, now turn that off, having made that point.
So, the project I am going to talk about is how one of those research and
development projects in Australia, in particular the dairy industry, has funded
a national wide project to get more women onto those boards. So, they said, we can’t just do it by, we
just can’t expect women to go into boards, we’ve got to have a program about
doing it. So, I’ve got a 10 minute
presentation of what we did, and after we have the final presentation,
hopefully we can some discussion about what we’ve learned and its relevance to
other countries. I’ve also got a little
handout here. It’s called Women in the
Dairy Industry. So the Australian Dairy Research and Development Corporation,
that works in exactly the same way as that, has a 3 year project to increase
the capacity of women to participate in decision making, specifically within the
dairy industry. Now, we do have a lot
of other programs in Australia, but I’m just talking about in the dairy
industry. Women set themselves up
......... and I’m a consultant to that project. Division in my head, I wrote it down I have to laugh it because
we’re now in Washington, but I hope that by the time we’ve finished, we will do
to agriculture what spring does to the cherry tree. We will make it beautiful, we will make blossom, we will make it
snow differently, and I hope that it transforms how agriculture works. And in particularly, how the dairy industry
in Australia works. So, that’s Kathy
McGown’s decision. We’ve had four phases
of the project. The first one, when we
started, and it’s a three year funded project, but first when started was to
research women’s participation. We
should and we didn’t know what women were doing the dairy industry. So, went and we spoke to women all over
Australia, and we said, what’s your participation on farm and in decision
making bodies. So we gathered the data
base. We looked at, we asked the women
what various stops in participating and where they were able to participate
what were the strengths, what helped them get involved. So, we documented that information and put
it together in a report. That was the first phase. The second phase we had a program of introducing ourselves,
that’s myself and my partner Cheryl Phillips, and the two consultants. We went to them and spoke to women, we spoke
to the industry, manufacturing, the government, whoever was involved in dairy
industry, introduced ourselves, and we said this is the project we’d like to
work with you. How would you like to
work with us? So we sent an invitation
out, we didn’t sort of say this is what you’ve got to do. And from those invitations we developed a
series of workshops. And interestingly
enough, there’s been a huge diversity of workshops from self-confidence right
through to industry structure and organization. And on requests, we provided those workshops to groups of
women. And it was interesting because
the format of women we’ve been working
with is really quite diverse. We’ve had
workshops at our kitchen table, with four and five women, and the kids playing
and the grandmother and the aunts and the uncles to speak workshops 50 60 women
turning up in a community hall. And we
basically give the women whatever they ask for in some format. And the women themselves organize it and we
come in to provide them what they need.
And the outcomes of those workshops are really interesting. In the first instance, the women get to know
each other. That might sound obvious,
but we’ve started in the dairy industry because the women are so busy working
on farm, that they often get very little chance to socialize, so they often
don’t know each other. So, the first
thing that happens is that networking.
So the first thing that happens is the networking introducing the women
to each other. And the second thing
that happens when women start talking is they find they’ve got so much in
common. Like what do you do with the
children when you go down to our dairy or dairy parlor to work. So I start sharing stories of how they
cope. And out of that comes a real
interest that they’ve got so much in common.
Like safety on the dairy, the working with kids, the caring for the old
people, employing labor, whatever it is.
So the women then start sharing their stories of how they work
together. And the third outcome from
the project has been a one from the women to have greater access to the
resources of the industry. Because then
they start discovering about all these programs, here, given out by industry,
but there’s very few women that participate.
So the women start saying well, we want education training, we want some
listing delivered, but we don’t want them in that, what we in Australia call
the pub, the hotel. And often our
meetings take place in the pub, but night time, the women say, well, we would
like that information, but could we please have it in the day time, in our hall
or our community or school between the hours of 10:00 and 2:00. Now in Australia those timings are really
significant because we have many children that go to school on buses, school
buses. And it’s no good having the
meeting really early or really late because the mothers have to be there to put
the kids on the school bus and pick them up.
So we found a time in the middle of the day is really important. The venues important, the timing important. And third, it’s child care. We found that if we provide child care in some
form, the moms can come and have their kids looked after for a couple of hours
and then they can concentrate. And if
we having the meeting in a hall, do you understand what I say about hall? A community facility. What often happens is we having the meeting
in the supper room and the kids have the hall.
And they get looked after well, so the women can concentrate. But if there’s someone sick or hurt, then
the mother can out and address the child’s needs. Okay, so that was phase two.
We run these workshops all around Australia. And the third thing that happened, we had many women who were
specifically interested in more day .... I said, okay, now I know what’s going
on, but I want to put my hand up to be on a board. I want to be, but not only an industry board, but women said we
want to be on our hospital board, a school board, a kindergarten board,
whatever it was. So, the next phase, which is where we are at the moment, is
we’ve got a leadership workshop, which is a three day moving training event for
women in the dairy industry. And we’ve
operating them all around the country from the, by the government and
industry. So, women do put in some
money, but mostly it’s outside funding.
And it’s been the most wonderful project. And I’ve got some women here, who, hopefully, by themselves can
talk about the outcomes. Some of the
dairy farmers who’ve participated in that leadership workshop. Twenty-five women, three days. The first part of the day is looking at who
you are, your own values, and getting a sense of confidence that, in fact, the
industry needs you. And you’ve got to
have all that blossom. We need each
tree to blossom. It’s no good having some dead trees in your midst. And each tree will blossom differently. So,
really supporting the women to be the best person that they can be. So that’s the first day. The second day is about industry
organization and structure. So we get the heavies from the industry to come and
explain how the money’s spent, who gets it, and how it’s used. And then on the third day, the women develop
their own project. And the projects
have been fascinating. They range from
going home and working with their farm family on improving communication
through to, in Australia, we’re currently having a big debate about government
support for the industry. So some women
have run programs on deregulation for there -- back into their own
communities. So, that’s the third part
of the program is the workshops. And
the final part of the program is the establishment of a national network. Because we’ve made the assumption it’s no
good just, it’s very good doing local things and regional things, but if we’re
going to blossom with the whole industry, we actually have to work nationally. So we’ve got a very big contingent of dairy
farmers at this conference, I think we’ve got 15 dairy farmers from each state
in Australia. They’ve come to learn
about how this sort of thing works to go back home to Australia and do a
national women and dairy network. So
that when we put our hands up to the international boards, we know each other,
and we can work together, and it’s not going to be one littler person by
themselves, but they’ve 2 or 3 and they’ve got a really big network behind
them.
So, in summary, the dairy project is funded by the dairy industry. It works with the women, it works with
organizations, and it works with manufacturers. It stops where the women were at, and helps them to do what
they’re best able to do. And in
closing, I would like to share with you some of main learnings, because that’s
probably the most useful thing for other countries. We have learned that women are really keen to do part of decision
making. What they need is an
offer. And they need permission from
the industry that we want you. Now that
may sound profound, but the women say we don’t want to go there and be look
alike men. We want to go there and be
women, mothers, wives, and farmers. And
we want it recognized that we’re mothers of kids, we need child care, we look
after our old people. And that’s been
really important because the industry in Australia is now saying, yeah, we want
you as mothers, we want you as wives, we want you as dairy farmers, we don’t
want anymore look alike men. We want
the feminine qualities. So that’s been
a really big learning, and it has made the women feel so confident. Secondly, we have learned that women
specific activities are really important.
Not to say only, but in Australia we have a wide range of leadership
courses and we have quite a few mixed.
And if some not for men only, but some courses that may not have to do
because they’re so high up. But we
found out on this scale, that when we have the women only dairy industry, that
the women really benefit from being women specific, and that has been an
interesting learning for us. Not to say
only will always happen like that, but we hope the women will graduate from
doing the women specific program to doing the mixed program and maybe
eventually they’ll take up the higher echelon ones, fellowship programs at
the ....., so that’s the second
learning. The third learning we’ve had
that industry is has been really came to help us. And a bit like this conference with the funding, we found that
women have gone to industry have been really pleased, not only to funders, but
also to assistance and provide support to women. And I’m really happy to talk a bit about that, because that was a
big surprise to us. We weren’t at all
conscious of how much industry really did want women on their boards and did
one of our schools. And women
approached and we had a lot of support.
And finally, the learning has been, we have to do this work slowly. A three project has been really useful, but
make it not in a hurry. We can write to
the women already and can work with them. So allowing enough time, to work with
the women where the women are at as opposed to the government saying this is
what you’re going to do, or the board saying this is what we’re going to
do. To be bumming up in the approach to
be where the women want to be has been really important. And finally the women have asked for skill
development. And skill development has
been areas like public speaking, how we get our own confidence, how we get
groups running at home, because they don’t want to be just by themselves. And then that skill of how industry
works. Like if you’re on a board, once
you get to have your upper right board so it works properly. And there’s an enormous amount of knowledge
in the system that often our farming women didn’t have it. So we’re sharing the skills about how that
works. So, I’m really happy to answer
questions, but just before I finish, the women who have been part of it, just
put your hand up. Christine, your here;
and Vivian is here; and we’ll be happy to have some general discussion from
those participants at the end. So thank
you.
SPEAKER: Thank you very
much. You could not have been a better
lead into my presentation, either, except that we’ve got a terribly small room
and I am planning on you getting up, moving around, and going into groups, and
maybe using some of your own skills to help you identify where you are and how
you could go home and maybe take some very basic skills to either form an
organization in your own country or in your own community, but also to, if you
all are ready, in an organization. How
you might strengthen that organization.
I have several handouts which I will be giving you, once we have broken
into small groups, and I think I’m going to ask you to help pass things out.
I had title my presentation, “Get Organized - Strengthen Agriculture
through your Leadership”. We have heard
over and over this week about what percentage of agriculture women and that to
me is a real shame if they are loosing that talent which should be on the
boards or that should be part of the leadership of our industry. And what I want you to do is to be thinking
about how you can go home, you would not be here if you did not have some
leadership skill. You would not have
been chosen among your people or among your group or if you had not had some
kind of leadership skill to offer. So
what we want to do is help you kind of direct those skills to give you a few
tools when you go home so that you are ready to use those skills to improve
agriculture where you are. We are
often, comment is you bloom where you’re planted, well, right now you’re
planted in Washington, but that’s only going to be for a week. You’re all going to go home to a, back to
the situation from where you came, and if you cannot take something from this
conference that you feel you can use to benefit where you have come from, it
would be a real shame. So, at this time
I’d like you to divide into maybe 8 groups and we will move this, these things
up so we can move one of the -- couple of the groups up here. The reason I did that, I was looking at the
size of the room and I think that’s going to make 8 to 10 in each group. This is a big bunch of women in this very
small space. So --
Everyone breaks up into groups.
Participants are inaudible.
Let’s start with the leader from the back to groups work your way up
through. To tell your three positive
things that, I want you to do them on the microphone, so that when they do do a
transcript, we’ve got those down.
PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.
SPEAKER: Okay, one other question before that, is there anybody in this
group from North Carolina?
No? Okay. We had a reporter who was looking for the
eight ladies from North Carolina, and if one of them was in here, we wanted to
make sure she found her.
PARTICIPANT: I’m Elaine Pepe I’m a booth farmer from Northeastern
Victoria in South Eastern Australia. Umm I’m on a couple of a number of
advisory boards on ...... One that struck me most important was that you need
to know your stuff as we say in Victoria or do your homework before you get
wherever you are going. We need to be
looking for women as representatives of diversity and diversity meaning all
sorts of differrent ways of representing the other seeming diverse people. And the people you contact at the very start
ring someone up, don’t just put out the notice in the paper. Make sure there is personal contact like I
would say that ...... I thinjk you would be really good at such and such and go
for it because I think you have the skills, I see that in you.
SPEAKER: That support for each other is going to be very very
important. Someone else from back there.
They don’t act like they’re, are you ready? Come on down. You
evidently are going to be the ring that
they stand in. That seems to work.
PARTCIPANT: Oh my gosh I ....
here. I am going to try to do this in
English, but if you don’t understand me just tell me. Ok? Ok. We didn’t have enough time to discuss, we
didn’t have enough time to discuss that the last suggestion that ..... However, we conclude .... as follow. It is to provide government support for
women who are ..... board candidates.
So, so that those women understnad how to be a board member understand
...... legislation and responsibilities.
We are here because we are going to discuss ideas with other women to
gain support and to learn from their experiences like lessons learned from
women from other countries. And in
conclusion to elect women in leadership and ....... sometimes women are leaders
because because we are leaders. And it
is kills me that gentlement are here and it happens that in other countries
that you ask permission to learn to be a leader to be here. And uh.. If we want to change women work we
have to do it, you know. Its not, its
not a battle ..... but in conclusion we don’t don’t let men to get your
permission to be a leader.
SPEAKER: Thank you. Back in
that back corner I was trying to get the .... furthest away first. You still don’t have anything back
there? Ah finally, someone stood
up.
PARTICIPANT: Umm, I’m Carolyn McDonnel form Suskwetueen Canada. Umm the ladies back there are
wonderful. They were helping me more
than I think I helped them, but they said that I guess, the thing would be to
become an activist. To lobby your
government, and be sure to have a newsletter.
SPEAKER: I find it interesting that we are getting people from all
different countries. This is
great.
PARTICIPANT: I’m Hillary Whither, a dairy farmer from New Zealand and
it is really great to be a part of this workshop and I’ve certainly gained
heaps .... and I sure youpeople all have too.
We’ve come up with three quire differrent recommendations. The first recommendation trealted to the
need to have a good program and good training behind you. And in order to do that you needed to be
sklilled enough so that you could move in and grab the opportunities as they
came so that you could be there. You
were informed and skilled up so that you could do that. Now uh... in other words, grab the
opportunities. Part of that too is that
you need to educate yourself where there’s gaps. So for example if you see you have gaps in terms of understanding
financials makle yourself informed so that you can move on and understand very
important things like financial issues on boards. Umm you’ll also need to retain your credibility. Also as part of this good program and
training you need to retain your credibility so that when you when you identify
a need, ahh you have the credibility, you go and learn about it, and then yuou
have the credibility that you understnand these matters. That’s really important. So that covers the need to be skilled and
trained. The second issue we came up
with was the need for women to have a support network behind them and to
identify strengths of the people who are supporting them and accepting support
at all level. And part of that means
learning how to listen. It’s really
important if you’ve got a network behind you that you learn how to listen to
these people. They’ve all got something
really valuable to contribute. In other
words, twoears in a town, and use them in that proportion. In other words, use your ears twice as
much. Some of us identify that some
women feel the tall poppy syndrome, and we see that the way to prevent having a
tall poppy syndrome, I mean that other women may well see you moving forward
and want to chop you down. And in order
to, in order to prevent that we saw a way of using the network, informing them,
encouraging them, listening to them, and a taking to also bring them up to
speed. And that way, if you bring your
supportive network up to speed so that they are with you, you’re educating
them, you’re informing them, they won’t want to chop you down because you’ll be
part of their team, and they’ll be with you.
Finally, the issue was to exploit gossip. That’s a really important part of a network. Exploit gossip, that’s what it’s all
about. Okay, now we are on this board,
obviously, we need to be an avenue. The
most important thing when you’re on the board is to realize that you are there
because you are the best person for the job, not there just because of your
gender.
Thank you.
SPEAKER: Very good. Very
good. Although I know some women who
are moving up in on boards who starated out as the secretary, because that’s
what they expected of her. And she was
wiling to that for awhile, but still has moved on. You’re next.
PARTICIPANT: Thank you. My name
is Karen Oliver, and I’m from southwest Western Austrailia, I’m not an
agriculturist, I’m a principal of rural senior high school. And the group that I was in covered much the
same as what the other groups have already said. But, the suggestions that we came up with was start small. If you’re going to get a group going then
start very small because you can create specific opportunities if you do
that. You make it possible for women to
participate. Obviously, then, you need
to provide as much information and knowledge as you can. And the more knowledge people have, the more
powerful they feel. And there’s no
doubt that why that’s a trueism, it is really true. So think about that.
While I was talking to the group, I suggested taht another thing that
you might like to think about is how about we try in the next generation of
women so that we don’t do this all over again.
And the third thing was that it was very important to have quality
people doing the training. So anybody you
use as a tutor, and don’t overlook the expertise that is available locally, make
sure that they are very well trained so that you don’t put people off and you
don’t loose people because the workshop actually did nothing for them. Thank you.
SPEAKER: Very good ideas. Are
you the spokesperson here?
DOTTIE CLEEK: I’m Dottie Cleek from the Department of Agriculture and
we basically agreed with most of the recommendations that the ladies here have
made. I think that we came down to our
final conclusions of strategies and our strategies would be to gather
information, do a lot of networking at the local levels and work your way
up. We need a good supprot system, and
we need to affect change, promote it, and if it’s not what we like, then let’s
get rid of it.
SPEAKER: I hope you have enjoyed this session. I want open the floor up to any questions
from, that you might have for any of the three of us. Is there still a group back there? Is there a group in the middle?
No. They’ve all had a
chance. Linda.
PARTICIPANT: My question to the group is, in my area, my rural area, I
live 25 miles from urban center that employs a lot of farm women, and in our
church and in our clubs, service clubs, and in farm organizations, we find that
the young women do not want to take part, they do not have time to take part,
and it’s going to be becoming a real problem of who’s going to do the community
service when these women continue to work.
And I just wondered if you’re seeing that problem in your communities.
AUDIENCE: Yes.
SPEAKER: And have you a suggestion how we solve it?
PARTICIPANT: I’m Marty Fitzer from New South Wales in Australia. And I that lady’s question tapped into
something that someone mentioned before.
What happens? The same thing
that’s happening in our country. The young women are working off farms, they
don’t have the time, they really see that if they’re going to work they’re
going to do paid work. And I see in the
community where I grew up that this really creates a lot of conflict with the
older women feeling that the younger women are choosing a different path. They’re resentful that no one is taking on
the Red Cross and the church work. And
it’s a source of conflict, and I think it’s really a potential, very big
problem in our country. And, I think
both sides need to value what the other side has done. I think it’s really a good case of women
needing to support women rather than tearing each other down, because I often
say that the young women are trying to create a path for themselves, which is
different from your mothers. They’re not
being disrespect - respectful to what their mothers have done, but often their
mothers and the elderly women in the community are the ones who are stopping
them rather than the men stopping them to take opportunities. So, I don’t know the solution, but I think
women have really got to care for women in that instance and not be their own
worst enemy.
PARTICIPANT: My name is Fiona
McKenzie, I work in a university, and the university I work in has had a women
in leadership program for the last five years.
It has had far reaching influence in the university, but a couple of
very simple strategies that I learned very early on being part of the women in
leadership group at the university. A
really simple one was when we, we were encouraged as women, when we go into a
room set up for a meeting that we don’t automatically sit at the end or the
side. But, we are the first ones there,
we are entitled to sit at the head of the table. That we are so socialized that we take the secondary position all
the time. The second thing that I
learned very early on was to have a goal, that no one is going to punish you
because you’ve had a goal. If you
continually doubt yourself or continue to apologize for your actions, no one is
going to give you credit for the good things that you have done. So don’t be your own worst enemy. You must put yourself up and have a goal.
Thank you, Fiona. That was a great introduction to what I was going to
say. In our country, in the early days
of suffrage, I’m alone from Australia. Um,
in the early days of suffrage in Australia in about the 1900's ..........had a
song for women, don’t be too polite girls.
I can see a couple of my compatriots, one in particular, cringing at
what I’m about to say. I’m in one
advisory counsel to ..... I get paid $150.00 to go to a meeting. The meeting’s four and half hours of actual
.......... I do a hell of a lot of work.
I have just completed a consultancy with three other women. We have saved our government around about
$2,000 in consultancy. For that, I have
had the privilege of sleeping in a three and a half star hotel in the city and
free first class train, train travel.
So, I’m going to go on being polite, because I also sit in two other
advisory committees. And now my
government has sent me here, that prides me to come to America, tremendous
privilege, but now they’ve opened up the door and I’ve let loose a lot.
.......... not going to be too polite.
I’m going to start asking for recompense for my work. Any man who represents my country goes on
work time. My salary is being earned on
my farm by my husband and a neighbor, who are having to pay, because I’m not
there, I don’t do a great deal of farm work, but the books are now behind. The books will be further behind when I get
home in three weeks time. I have to
know that they are going to pay me to do it.
So, I’m going to start asking, I’m not going to be too polite. I’ll still be fairly polite, but not as much
as I used to be.
INTERPRETER: My name is Maria Enescapalan, I’m Mexican. I don’t know what, I’m going to disagree a
bit with what was said earlier. I don’t
think you need university education to be a leader. I received a high school level of education in Mexico in organic
farming and I’m a leader now to my female friends who work with me in
companeros, my female friends. I think
its efficient to understand what we’re doing and to know how to communicate
with other people, that is to be able to teach others, and to ask for help for
other companeros, they are behind us and working with us.
PARTICIPANT: Hi! I’m Amber
Miller and I represent the National FFA Organization. And I just wanted. Oh,
sorry, for the tape. And I just wanted to address the question on youth that
was asked earlier, about women being involved.
And I just wanted to say that the National FFA Organization now has one
third of our membership that is represented by females, and we also have fifty
percent of our leadership positions that are held by females. So some youth across the United States that
are females are seeing the importance of agriculture and our becoming involved
in leadership positions.
SPEAKER: I want to sum up. You
will find, you did put the papers at the back, at the back of room there are
some papers that I prepared for you, for you to pick up on your way out of the
room. I want to thank you for being
involved, participating, and making this a really exciting session. I am President of American Agri Women and
started out as a dairy farm wife with spending most of my time in the dairy
parlor, so, you can move forward and move up, and to be involved and President
of a national organization is really exciting.
I have a question right here.
PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.
SPEAKER: Do we have a talent bank of farm women? You mean an actually listing of what they
can do? We’re working on it.
And we do have a web site, americanagriwomen.com, with no hyphens and
all small letters. So, if you want to
touch base with us after you get home, we’d sure love to hear from you. Thank you so much for your time.
MEDIATOR: Not wanting to take over the show, I just want to say thank
you to our three presenters, to our gentleman and to the two women who have
done such a terrific of facilitating this great discussion. So thank you, all three of you.