Constraints to women’s involvement in agricultural leadership

Abstract

This paper uses data from a survey of women in the Australian sugar industry to examine why women are absent in decision‐making positions within the agri‐political organization Canegrowers. Canegrowers represents the interests of over 6,000 cane farming families in Australia, but no woman holds any of the 181 positions of elected leadership within the organization. Factor analysis of the 233 returned survey responses revealed that there are five main factors which constrain women’s involvement in agri‐politics. These are a lack of support, the conduct, time and location of meetings, the masculinist culture of the organization, women’s multiple commitments and a lack of interest. The paper concludes by highlighting the limited amount of work that has considered women’s leadership in a rural context and identifying some directions future work could take.