by: Sisko Mäkelä, COPA Committee and IFAP Women Committee
October 15, 1999

Your Royal Highness, Dear Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen

There is lack of information available on women in rural areas of Europe. There is statistical data at the national and local levels, but it is hard to make generalisations at the European level. Although the member countries are diverse in regards to their social, economic and political systems, the nature of the problems and objectives to be pursued are strikingly similar.

I try to give you some idea of the position of rural women in Europe with some main issues or key words that always rise to the discussion.

1. Unrecognition and undervaluation

The family ownership has gone from one generation to the next mostly through the male line. That has made farming mainly a male-dominated industry. Women are invisible work force, there is no statistical or even estimated data on the amount of farmers' wives of Europe, they are many times assisting spouses that are not registered as "active" in official figures. In spite of this invisibility of women their effect on rural economy is really essential. The definitions of the labour force often underestimate the extent of women's work. They do much unpaid work for their families or for the rural community or they work in the informal sector.

The first necessary step towards the recognition is the compulsory registration of the assisting spouses. It has been done in different countries in different ways, the status of women can be as self-employed farmer, associate or joint manager, employee or family worker, but the lack of data tells how much work in this aspect is still undone.

Too little is done to fully recognise women's role on farms and in rural communities - legally - economically, technically and in statistics. We need new ways of thinking, new economic indicators to see the relative economic contributions of women not only through paid work, but also through the unpaid work and the work done in the informal sectors of rural economies.

2. Multifunctional role

The farms lead by women are usually small - or middle scale farms and that means that they need income from other sources. The diversification of farms has opened up new possibilities, many women farmers are engaged in e.g. organic farming or non-agricultural work, like agro-tourism. The women also carry out much of the unacknowledged domestic and voluntary work that contributes families and communities to survive, that work could be professionalised and paid.

One part of women's multifunctional role that the society in general and women themselves have greatly undervalued and often completely ignored is the role of women in maintaining and consolidating the living countryside with its heritage and traditions.

3. Training

In general, although not in all countries, women in rural areas are less educated than urban women or rural men. Training is an essential tool to help rural women to find themselves a visible role in the society.

When we think of women's access to training, they have many obstacles where they should need help from the society, obstacles like lack of public services: e.g. relief services, childcare, transportation, and also lack of time: many times they have double or triple workload compared to men. To help women to participate these courses the training programmes should be locally and even personally tailored in co-operation with women themselves. We can use nowadays more innovative training models that fit women's daily schedules. That means part-time courses, distance learning fully exploiting new information technology up to the university level. Sweden has used those modern technologies much in giving rural women education e.g. in languages and organizational democracy.

Women's vocational training has primarily been concentrated in traditionally "feminine" subjects, but that isolates women more than helps mainstreaming of women in rural communities. The training courses should be organized in entrepreneurship: village and farm tourism, agro-forestry, fish-farming, integrated production methods (organic farming), business-planning, accounting, financing and loan-procedures, taxation, marketing.

The latest technology and the new needs of people give quite new facilities for highly educated women, like remote work in software or in advertising. Training in communication technologies is one source of equality. Getting more know-how about information technology increases women's opportunities in the labour market. That is also useful for rural women who live far from economic centres. I have noticed in my own life how I can take care of issues in European and also in the world-wide level and yet live in a remote peaceful countryside "in the middle of nothing" like one Danish once described our village.

It is naturally important to increase women's knowledge in making business, but I feel that the most important thing in training is that we rural women learn to trust ourselves and our own skills.

4. Social security

Many assisting spouses have little or no social protection beyond derived rights obtained through their husbands. That works quite well when the family works well, but the problems rise in the case of death or divorce, as the women have no status and few rights. In the report made to the European Parliament on the situation of spouses of the self-employed Astrid Lulling concludes that the compulsory insurance cover is the only way to ensure adequate social protection for rural women, because the voluntary systems that are possible in several EU-countries just don't work. Establishing pension and social security schemes for rural women gives them equal rights with men. The rural women should also have equal access to social institutions and services as compared to women living in cities.

5. The infrastructure of rural communities

The increased provision of social and other services in rural areas increases rural women's ability to enter into training courses and paid employment. If we want to get women visible in the rural economy, it is necessary that there exist services in rural communities like child-care and care of the elderly, health care centres, information and library facilities, public transportation and marketing facilities.

6. Representation in decision making

Decisions in rural areas are made in fora that are predominantly masculine and so they tend to reflect the values, perspectives and life experiences of the people who make them. Women are not usually represented in the highest levels of leadership. Well, that is not problem only of women living in rural areas! Structural reforms that happen nowadays in many European societies often create hardships on different segments of population, many times on rural women. It is very dangerous if their voice is not heard in those situations.

The same under-representation is seen also in agricultural and farmers' organizations. We had a seminar in Scandinavian level last August in Iceland on that issue. One of the main ideas was that women and men have a different aspect to the life and it is waste of energy and talents if we don't use the surplus women can give to the farmers' organizations. The gender perspective should be ensured by concrete action plans and programmes, too often the organizations admit the meaning of women but it doesn't turn concrete.

How can we contribute ourselves to get more women to the higher positions of decision-making? There are no easy and fast answers. One means is to develop and promote personal skills by training courses on leadership, public speaking and decision-making. Another way is to make women's nets. The voice of a group is much louder than a voice of a single person! In the last years an increasing number of women's groups and associations and other NGOs have been established. In these groups women have the space to articulate their concerns. Also the growth of NGOs and women's associations which pay attention to gender issues has benefited rural women. But the big problem is how to integrate these issues into the overall programme of work in the organizations.

7. Depopulation from rural areas

If we solve the future of the women in rural areas, we solve the future of the rural areas! Policies encouraging women and young girls to leave the countryside will eventually lead to total abandonment of rural areas. Young people are required to leave their rural community to acquire higher education and after few years absence it is very hard to return.

We in Finland have vast areas with little population far from cities. The university analysis has shown that vanishing of young women from the area means in longer-term depopulation of the area. The women in the Finnish countryside are very independent and equal, and they want to build their own life. If they have no possibilities in the rural areas they look for them in the towns. Creating new jobs for women and making countryside an attractive place to live is an utmost task for us!

There are also opposite experiences in Europe. In Italy many young women choose the agriculture and living in the countryside. They are unprejudiced and start often new forms of agriculture like organic farming, agro-tourism etc. In many cases they come from the cities. And what is interesting, the research has shown that the women's production capacity in the farms is 30% bigger than the men's capacity.

Finally, I want to tell you with some words how we have tried to solve these problems in Finland.

Women have always been in the farmers' organization equal members with men, we have a personal membership in MTK (Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners). That is maybe one reason to the position of women farmers in Finland. We usually own our family farms together: 50% - 50%. Women act as partners: we share the farm income between the spouses according to what is our share in the farm work. That has an effect also to the social security, because the taxable income, the social security and the qualifications are consistent with each other.

The rural women have had a compulsory personal social security from early 70s that includes e.g. the old-age-pension and sickness insurance and maternity provision.

Very essential to women's participation in training and in decision making fora has been the relief service system that we have had from 1974. Today we have 22 holidays with no fee. There is also a possibility to get 15 days relief services for training with a reduced fee. The farmers have the right to get subsidy for training. Those things have helped women's active participation to training. Now the main subjects are the quality training and the training in communication technologies. I think that half of the Finnish farms have a computer and 20% have internet connections.

For all rural women in Finland the S.C. women's loans have been very important. In most cases women don't need much money to start an enterprise, but in many cases they don't have any guarantee. The special small loans without guarantee for women have been very popular.

As a conclusion: We have to take our role in rural communities - no one gives it to us. We women and our activities are the backbone of the rural areas. Thank you.