According to the 2021 Canadian Census of Agriculture, women now account for just more than 30% of working farmers.
In 2021, there were 79,795 female farm operators, up from 77,970 in 2016. This means that 30.4% of total farm operators are female, which is up from 28.7% in 2016.
Dianne Harkin, a retired Winchester-area dairy farmer, describes the fact that the census even counts women as farm operators now, as a hard-won victory.
Harkin recalls how Statistics Canada was persuaded to let farm women count as more than wives by according to them status as operators on the census form.
“A husband and wife could indicate themselves as ‘operator one’ and ‘operator two,’” explains Harkin.
At the time, Harkin was Founder and Leader of the Women for the Survival of Agriculture
This was an influential advocacy group that spread to chapters across the country.
When Statistics Canada duly sent out a female bureaucrat to hear the group’s demands at a business meeting, the visitor showed up wearing overalls and rubber boots.
Harkin still thinks back on the fashion faux pas as typical for the stereotyping all farmers had.
“There was even a flat-out stigma to being a farmer” says Harkin.
“Tracing those attitudes back to the visible poverty farmers endured in the Great Depression. Even during the 1970s, women were not proud to be farmers,” she adds.