International Women’s Day 2023
Celebrating our entrepreneurial farmers!
Women are well represented in the Scottish Agritourism membership. Two thirds of over 300 individual members of Scottish Agritourism are women and many businesses have extremely talented females in their teams throughout their organisations driving forward not only the agritourism business but also the farming business. Women in agritourism are driving growth in farming and agritourism enterprises, playing a key decision making role in family farming and crofting businesses, bolstering rural economies and finding ways to connect consumers with farmers.
We are proud to be the organisation supporting women to play a key role in driving forward agritourism in Scotland.
- 13/15 of our Regional Destination Leaders are women
- 4/7 of our Board members are women including Caroline Millar, Sector Lead
- Last year our delegation of seven members to the International Agritourism Conference was all women – the only delegation from the UK.
Many farms cannot afford two full time members of staff to be working at home and in many cases it is women who go off farm to work, through necessity. Agritourism is “growing the farm pie” to make it financially viable for two or more people to work in the combined farming and tourism business. This means more women are working in both the farm and agritourism ventures and by working day to day based on the farm, this is facilitating more women to play a management and decision making role in both agritourism and the core farming business. The industry growth tracker survey found agritourism is addressing the gender imbalance in farm ownership with more female directors in agritourism and farm retail businesses, the opposite of core agricultural businesses.
Agritourism is leading the way in giving more women a voice within agriculture and in the week leading up to International Women’s Day we’ve been celebrating our entrepreneurial farmers at the heart of Scottish Agritourism – those that are milking cows in the morning and welcoming guests to a farm stay in the afternoon, or who spend all night in the lambing shed before welcoming a coach full of tourists for a farm tour, or who are growing the vegetables and fresh produce in the fields while also running a vibrant farm shop. You can find out what makes just some of our women members so amazing in the gallery above.
Caroline Millar, Sector Lead:
“Women have always been at the heart of farming businesses but Scotland’s vibrant agritourism sector is allowing women to play a key role in the farming business alongside their male counterparts as equal owners and decision makers. Most farm succession has traditionally seen farms pass to the males in the next generation. Ultimately having more female role models driving vibrant agri-businesses and playing a leadership role in the sector will change attitudes about handing over the farm to the next generation with women rightly recognised as equally capable of running a farming business.”