Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for this very important question. Gender equality is a key priority of my Department, one of the founding values of the European Union and a key objective of the United Nations sustainable development goals. The programme for Government includes commitments to develop and implement a new national strategy for women and girls and to act on the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality. The Department will represent the interests of the agrifood sector in policy development on these commitments. The recently published draft agrifood strategy to 2030 recognises the importance of gender balance to the long-term sustainable future for primary producers and includes actions to promote and improve gender balance at all levels, including at senior management and board level.

The Central Statistic Office, CSO, labour force survey 2019 showed that 13% of workers in the primary agriculture, forestry and fishing sector were female. For 2020, the figure was 15%, the highest since 2010. The CSO’s 2016 farm structure survey recorded 71,700 women working on farms, of whom fewer than one quarter, or 16,100, were farm holders. In a European context, the number of women in farming has been slowly increasing and data from 2016 suggest that, on average, approximately 30% of farms across the EU are managed by women. That is significantly higher than the figure for Ireland, albeit with some considerable differences across countries.

The development of the CAP strategic plan, CSP, involves a number of stages, including a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, SWOT analysis and a needs assessment. The SWOT analysis in preparation for Ireland’s CSP identified gender inequality and the low levels of female participation in the agri-food sector, especially in leadership roles, as weaknesses, while the economic benefits of increasing female participation were identified as an opportunity. The needs assessment for the CSP points to the need to increase opportunities for women in agriculture and business development. A number of interventions were identified for consideration. They are LEADER programme-----

See this speech in context