Is Farming a Man's Job?
- Bud Potter
- Jul 9
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 10
In 2008, Wall Street crashed. (This is relevant, stay with me) In September 2008, all hope was lost, and the financial crisis reached its summit. This had begun in 2007, slowly, then all at once. Mass unemployment, skyrocketing house prices, and generally a financial world that was now unrecognisable, and one that here in 2026 we can agree has never truly healed.
January 2007 - an unassuming family decides to pour all of their money into purchasing a 22-acre farm in West Devon, and really take a swing at growing their mortgage advisory company…You probably don’t need the rest of that story.
Anyway, 2 bankruptcies later, all assets lost, all company and family members gone to find their own work, left just myself and my mother on an empty lot of fields, in an empty converted barn, with empty pockets and an empty fridge, whilst my father found work in London.
Then one fateful Saturday, at Hatherleigh livestock market, my mother met a local farmer, and they split a £50 bill for a fully pregnant sow (lady pig). My mother would keep the pig, the farmer would buy the food, they would split the piglets and the meat. And so the story goes, we became farmers.
We would grow as a farm, we kept pigs for the next 8 years, as well as chickens, ducks, sheep, bulls, peacocks, rabbits and guinea pigs, horses, and everything else we could fit and make any sort of profit from. Farming is a business at the end of the day. We sold meat, eggs, and livestock, and kept ourselves fed in the meantime, so one may argue we were like every other farmer in the local area, maybe smaller scale, but nonetheless, we kept animals, we killed animals, we made money from animals. However, we were not anything like the other farmers in the area; my mother, and this may shock you, was a woman, and that had everything to do with everything.
Now I feel it’s important I clarify - I am now a vegetarian; I am extremely passionate about animal rights, wildlife adaptation and generally being eco-friendly and fighting against climate change. That is why this is so important to me. I am a firm believer that maltreating farmers is no way to improve animal care in farming; I also believe that making farming accessible to all people,( by that I mean land maintenance, growing, animal care etc) is indeed the only way to improve farming, improve animal care, reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint and in the biggest picture, reduce poverty and improve social structures… but one thing at a time.
So, back to the question, is farming a man’s job? My mother was in charge of our farm growing up and always taught me to be very hands-on, so of course my first reaction to that question is no. Yet misogyny is rife in farming communities. My question is (very genuinely), is there a reason for that? Maybe it is simply that not enough women are interested in farming?
Well… you see the issue is… that is not true.
(Side note: I will be using the terms “Man and Woman” to describe male and female; this is partly to do with representing the data I have found accordingly, but also because queer identities in farming are vastly undocumented… which I hope to change… in time)
THE NUMBERS
For as long as farming has existed, there have been women farmers. Traditionally speaking, those who were raising young children or expected to become pregnant would often work with the smaller animals and “domestic duties”; but times have changed. People who are capable of being pregnant are no longer bound by that responsibility, and need I remind you that in the past 100 years (or so) we have had 2 world wars that have required women to be the main workforce for all agriculture-based jobs.
As of today, 64% of Agricultural students are women. However, after studying, in Farm Holders Positions, women only make up 16-22%. So women are doing the studying, and then stepping down, they must be going into admin, or some alternative career. That can’t be true, because when you start to include unpaid labour, women suddenly shoot up to 55%...
That's…
The majority of farm hands and agricultural manual labourers…
Are unpaid women.
Now there are many ways to swallow this statistic; I’m not trying to insinuate that women are being held hostage by farmers, held in electrical fence pens and forced to farm. It wouldn’t be unfair to bat those numbers away with that funny little word “tradition”. You’re right, traditionally women play the role of farmers' wives, whereby they do the labour to keep their family and livelihood in check. The problem with this is that it forms an entrapment, where women are expected to give labour with no financial independence, making them reliant on their husbands. This is a well-studied, fought-over, protested system, and for the most part, has become less common in modern society, so why is farming in the past?
Is it simply biological? The control of the “natural order”.
Or is it a hoax? Ensuring farming is no longer relevant or functional in the modern day?
ARE THEY STRONG ENOUGH?
I recently finished working on a farm, and during my time there, I was in charge of livestock, just below the managerial team, and I taught other workers the ropes. I was very proud of the trust I managed to grow, and I repeatedly requested to work with the pigs and cows, as I was not permitted. I trained a male colleague, and after just one day of him being there, it was in discussion he would work with pigs and cows, despite having considerably less experience than I. This was very upsetting, of course, here I am working hard, and here comes billy big bollocks no-experience and he’s thrown in and trusted with the large animals, no questions asked. I tried to be reasonable. I tried to ask myself, calmly: Bud, you’re only 5’4, you are a woman, you’re a petite woman at that, are you strong enough to be trusted with large animals?
That question can’t truly be answered, unfortunately, unless the BBC want to take up the new reality show CAN YOU FIGHT A PIG WITH YOUR BARE HANDS?
Yet that was something that hung on my mind. Can I fight a pig with my bare hands? Could anyone fight a pig with their bare hands? Could anyone, unarmed, win a fight with a full-sized, hormonal boar? No. I don’t believe they could.
THE SAFETY
So women make up 55% of the workforce, but 90% (avg) of farm worker fatalities are male. The majority of those deaths are related to heavy machinery and livestock. Of livestock-related deaths among all people, 97% were due to domestic cattle. Because no one, not even Jake Paul on crack cocaine filming a boxing match for the price of a small continent, could win a fight with a fully mature cow.
More men are exposed to hazardous chemicals, large machinery and large animals in enclosed spaces, whereas more women are killed by being struck by large machinery and large animals in open spaces. Which is an interesting statistic we possibly don’t have time to really unpick.
But women statistically are more likely to be hit by something than to cause their own fatality.
Another large percentage of women’s deaths and injuries on farms come from overcompensating in risky environments, often attributed to be because they were trying to prove they were capable after being undermined by their colleagues. According to Farmers Weekly, 95% of farmers under 40 believe women’s mental health is the biggest hidden problem facing the industry. One could surmise that women are very literally being killed by being mistreated and undervalued.
But let’s not be coy; women, on average, are smaller than men. I am not trying to say they are not, on average, smaller than men. However, what I am saying is that farming is more than just a game of weight, it is a strategic, team-based career, it is filled with need for tenderness, patience and overwhelmingly, maths, pattern finding and puzzle solving. Surely we can find these attributes in both sexes.
In the same way you wouldn’t let a 5’4 woman pick up a bale of hay twice her size, I would also not let a 5’4 man or any-sized person pick up something too big for them. It is clear through the statistics shown that the lack of women in farming is actually completely farcical, and in fact, women are making up a majority of farmers. It seems the lack of women is an optical illusion and a psychological barrier we need to jump.
And when we do, farming will not only become more equitable but more accessible and attractive as a career for young people. Farming will never be a thing of the past; the more we stereotype it, the more it becomes hidden and lost in translation.
It is vital we change this trajectory. British farm numbers have decreased by nearly a quarter in the past 18 years alone. If we leave our food to corporations, we hand over all control of our lives and our politics. If we don’t work as a team and use everyone's skills at hand, we will become owned by the mega-wealthy who abuse the earth and natural resources, and they will become untouchable because if we ever disagree with them, they take the food off our plates.
Farming must become trendy.
Farming must become fashionable.
Farming must become fair.
Farming needs to be an open door to all people, because it is for all people. So no, in my opinion, based on the facts shown, farming is not a man’s job in principle, but it may be a man’s world.
I hope not for long.
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