Dr. Maura Farrell:

If we look at the agricultural colleges, there are quite a number of young women involved in agriculture. We have a strong cohort of women involved in the agricultural sciences. In respect of transferring that back to the farm gate, with the FLIARA project we did look at the attractiveness of farming for women. We found that a sense of well-being is a priority. Through a previous project that we were involved in, the ruralisation project, which was another European-funded project, we looked at what attracts young people to rural areas. We saw that for young people sector, the idea of well-being is hugely important. Even though farming can be a very challenging, often non-viable industry, it is also an industry that offers women that sense of well-being. With farming they can work from home and deliver on-farm diversification and work with sustainability aspects, animal aspects or whatever they want and tap into well-being. There is therefore an attractiveness about farming that appeals to younger people much more so than it has in the past.

We are on that cusp of change that the Leas-Chathaoirleach did say is there. In many respects, the Department of agriculture should be given great credit for the way it has come forward with the CAP strategic plan. We did an analysis on the CAP strategic plans across Europe. Only five of those plans across Europe took to the idea of putting in measures with regard to gender. Only two included specific measures, namely, Ireland and Spain. The Department of agriculture should be congratulated for that.

We recently spoke with the European Commission and one of the women from the Commission talked about “pinkwashing”. She suggested we make sure that is not going on. We are not in any way suggesting that is what happened with the Department of agriculture. We congratulate it on the measures it has brought forward. However we need to make sure that those measures are stable going into the next CAP and that gender becomes part of the identity of the CAP strategic plan and of farming. What we see at present is the idea of a renewed interest in agriculture for women. The policies are there. The idea of potential CAP plans is there. There are measures for women being directed in the CAP. Let that be from our particular research perspective. The new European innovation partnership for agriculture, EIP-AGRI, has a call-out for women also. There also are measures in respect of the targeted agriculture modernisation scheme, TAMS. All of these measures add to the advantage of women being in there using this and being part of the industry. We are on the cusp of looking for this as a renewed interest for women in agriculture.