Farm women – and men, I suspect – will be surprised to learn the extent that obstacles face young women entering the industry.

In Canada, many new initiatives in agriculture – the Ag Do More mental health foundation and the farm women’s’ network, for example – clearly have women in high-profile leadership positions.

In the fruit and vegetable sector, women have long been leaders. The late Brenda Lammens immediately comes to mind.

But on farms themselves, University of Guelph professor Sharada Srinivasan and her international research team have found women still struggle with farming’s very essentials, such as access to land and credit. And even if they have rights to such necessities, they are often dismissed simply because they are women. Their vital contributions to food production are poorly documented and misunderstood.

Srinivasan, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Gender, Justice and Development at Guelph, made this observation after completing fieldwork for a landmark four-year, four-country research project she’s leading.

She and her team interviewed 400 young farmers in Canada, China, India and Indonesia, to understand pathways to farming – that is, how they get into it, and how they are able to stick with it.  About one-quarter of the farmers they interviewed are women.

The research, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, is starting to reveal impediments for the next generation of farmers, which includes many women farmers.

Among their initial findings are that in Canada and India, women who farm still encounter societal barriers. “Gender issues come into play,” says Srinivasan. “When people think of young farmers, they think of young men, not young women.”

In their research, Srinivasan and her team found huge knowledge gaps related to young women in farming. Little research exists showing the contribution women make, especially young women. That either signals the new movement afoot involving young women farmers and research just hasn’t caught up, or it means women’s contributions are what she calls “invisible.”

Says Srinivasan: “You’re disadvantaged twice, because you’re a woman and because you’re young.”

Across the four countries, women told the researchers they weren’t taken seriously as farmers.

This discrimination manifested itself in different ways. For example, some aspects of modern farming, such as increased technology and mechanization, means there are fewer manual labour jobs on farms. And we know that in more developed societies, it’s a Catch 22 situation – there’s the need for more mechanization because no one, regardless of gender, wants to do manual labour.

But in some countries, women are discouraged from operating machinery. In those cases, modern farming actually reduces their chances for jobs.

This problem is further exacerbated by the rural exodus of job seekers headed for cities.  They’re mostly men. That leaves women behind to farm in an unwelcoming, increasingly mechanized environment.

Holding a land title is another problem. In some countries, only men can be landowners. That leaves women without equity and facing an impossible situation if they need to apply for credit, a normal part of doing business.

So it’s no wonder that women in some countries who farm may choose not to refer to themselves as farmers -- even though that’s what they are – because they’re not recognized in the same way as men.

“Canada is way ahead in self-identity,” says Srinivasan. “That’s not so in other countries. Women who farm don’t call themselves farmers.”