Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Tomorrow marks the UN International Day of Rural Women. I want to mark it by honouring the contribution of women and girls to agriculture and rural community development in Ireland. In agriculture, women have long been referred to as the invisible unpaid workforce on farms and there is plenty of evidence to back this up. NUIG research from a few years ago indicated that women are the sole owners of just 10% of all farmland in Ireland with most of these women owning the land through marital transfer rather than succession or inheritance. Only 4% of farms registered with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are in joint male and female names. We know that one quarter of our farms' workforce is women. These figures do not tally well for equality. No other occupation has such an imbalance in property ownership.

As rural women, we are not a homogenous group and I have been unfailingly inspired by so many rural women I have met. Indeed, there are many in this Chamber. As Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, I have had the opportunity and privilege to visit farms and rural enterprises throughout the country and have been lucky enough to encounter many wonderful women with unrelenting drive, determination and resilience to be innovative and industrious, to diversify and to drive on after personal trauma and difficult times. These are daughters and sisters, widows and mothers who all striving to provide for themselves and their families in sometimes very remote rural areas.

We are going to need every ounce of that determination and innovation as we tackle the huge climate and biodiversity crisis we face. It is vital that we as a country continue to deliver on the sustainable development goal of gender equality with every pillar of society supporting the others. We expect it of other countries, why not of ourselves?

With each new land registration, herd number or farm payment in a woman's name, each new qualification she gains, each new female successor named, each business sale she makes or each rural tiktok video she posts, rural women are challenging prevailing culture. They are challenging the future face of Ireland's rural enterprises. I honour them all for the part they play in ensuring our young girls know of the possibilities open for them. They have to see it to be it.

To rural men, we need your support in this too. I ask the farmers of Ireland why their daughters not their successors. What can we as policymakers do to help? How do we address that cultural bias that exists? We need to keep young women in rural communities and farming is as good a way as any of doing this.

Finally, to all my rural female colleagues and friends, let us enjoy our day on International Day of Rural Women and be sure to pause and admire the beauty of rural Ireland and celebrate our part within it.