When Simcoe farmer and Norfolk Federation of Agriculture president Jennifer Schooley talks about being a woman in agriculture, she tells the story of asking for a bank loan.
The fourth-generation apple farmer set up a Zoom meeting with a lawyer and a representative from a local bank. Her father and predecessor on the farm, Harold Schooley, did not join the online call “because he doesn’t have the patience to deal with the bank,” Schooley chuckled.
“So the lawyer was like, ‘Where’s the farmer?’ And I was like, ‘She’s right here.’”
Schooley — who spoke to The Spectator in between chairing a meeting of Norfolk council’s agricultural advisory committee and going back to her farm to fix a recalcitrant sprayer — “absolutely” attributes the difference in treatment to her being a female farmer in a male-dominated industry.
“And things like this happen all the time. It’s those assumptions that people make,” she said.
Even though women operate nearly one in three farms in Norfolk County and about 30 per cent of all farms nationwide, Schooley said she still gets talked down to by tractor shop employees who assume she lacks the knowledge to order the right parts.
And she chafes at being offered pink hats or work boots because she’s a woman.
“I don’t wear pink,” she said. “I am grossly insulted by the fact that you think I’m a female farmer, so you give me pink.”
Even more offensive was the time a sales representative from a chemical company handed out ball caps to the male farmers at a meeting and baking tools to the women.
Such incidents underscore the reality that women in agriculture “are not taken seriously all the time,” Schooley said.
And her experience is far from unique. In a 2020 survey conducted by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, two-thirds of female farmers in Ontario reported being disrespected because of their gender when dealing with agriculture-related service industries.
Women working in agriculture also faced greater barriers in career advancement and balancing their farm and family responsibilities than their male counterparts. Those challenges were compounded by a dearth of female role models serving in leadership positions in agriculture industry associations.
“That norm has changed,” said OFA director Andrea McCoy-Naperstkow.
It was only a few decades ago, McCoy-Naperstkow noted, that women started to be legally recognized as partners in farm businesses and could claim wages for farm-based work on their income taxes.
“We are now seeing a significant shift in how women are involved in the industry,” she said.
“You name a job in agriculture and you’re just as likely to find a woman in that role today as you would a man.”
Leaders on and off the farm
Women have always made essential contributions to family farms, whether cooking for work crews during barn raisings or taking turns minding each other’s children so the other mothers could work in the fields.
“You couldn’t run a farm without your wife doing all the stuff in the background,” said Schooley, pointing to old photos of her grandmother and other women out in the orchards, picking and sorting apples in skirts and heels.
“And then they go in and deal with the children and clean and cook,” she said. “The men are going to come in, kick their shoes off and sit down.”
She sees the many women in Norfolk running modern farms — whether in livestock, grain crops or fruit and vegetables — as building on the legacy of the Second World War-era “farmerettes,” teen girls whose farm labour fuelled the war effort.
These days, women commonly speak at agricultural conferences, lead industry groups and advocacy associations, mentor female farm entrepreneurs and showcase Canadian agriculture in the media. The overarching goal is to no longer have female farmers be “the only woman in the room” at leadership level, McCoy-Naperstkow said.
“The next generation of female farmers is passionate and committed,” she said. “Sometimes, all that’s needed is a bit of encouragement from others to give them the confidence they need to take a new step.”
Year of the woman farmer
Schooley was pleased to see the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations declare 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer.
The UN campaign seeks to close the global gender gap in agriculture, particularly in areas of the world where female farmers do not have the same legal, property, labour and financial rights as their male counterparts.
Closer to home, Schooley sees the year-long campaign as a chance to raise the profile of Norfolk’s female farmers “and celebrate the blood, sweat and tears that we’re bringing into this industry, and the innovation.”
“We need to show everybody that women are involved in agriculture just as much as men are, yet we’re not always recognized,” she said.
“Now that we’re taking on more of what would be traditionally considered men’s roles, I think there’s more of that healthy respect there, and it’s easier to bridge that gap.”
Women in Canadian agriculture
The 2021 Census of Agriculture conducted by Statistic Canada reported just under 80,000 female farm operators in Canada, making up 30.4 per cent of the farming population.
That was up from 28.7 per cent in 2016, the first time in 30 years the Canadian farm census recorded an increase in women operating farms, and particularly women farming on their own.
Provincial data from 2025 has women at the helm of 31 per cent of the nearly 50,000 farms in Ontario.
That figure is slightly higher in Norfolk, where 31.7 per cent of the 1,951 farms in the rural county are owned or co-owned by women.
By J.P. Antonacci, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on May 26, 2026 at 10:09
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