WOMEN AND FARMING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19478, 26 December 1925, Page 22 (Supplement)

WOMEN AND FARMING

BIG STAKE IN INDUSTRY. QUESTION OF EDUCATION. Writing in the British Journal of Agriculture, Miss E. H. Pratt, 0.8. E., 8.A., says:—Women have a big stake in the industry of agriculture, though the importance of their direct and indirect interest is insufficiently appreciated. The returns for 1923 (a year when conditions had returned more or less to normal after the temporary expension during the war), showed that 59,000 women and girls were in regular work on tho land in Great Britain, while 43.000 were casually employed. There are, too, a number of women in business on their own account as farmers ami market gardeners, and there are others engaged in agricultural instruction. The number of women directly engaged in agriculture is therefore considerable, even when compared with the employment of women in what are generally regarded as women’s trades. As regards indirect interests, there is hardly any caling in which the women of the household arc more intimately asociated with the daily work of its head than in agriculture. It has been well and truly said that “the home life of the farmhouse and farm cottage, which is mainly the direct result of the activities of women, reacts upon the general efficiency and wellbeing of the farm to an extent which is not usual in the case of the home life of persons occupied in other large industries/’ and that “a prosperous agricultural community can never be established until the women of the farms are able to take their due part in the consideration and treatment of all the influences which, affect its business and

Bearing these facts in mind, and remembering that rural depopulation has probably largely come about through the dissatisfaction of the women with prevailing conditions, which, has led tin on to persuade the men to migrate, it is natural to inquire whether in the I agricultural education offered to women ■ to-uay. there are any developments of | interest to chronicle. In other words/ are there any modifications in the more elementary forms of agricultural education (ie.e., those available to the majority). which suggest that the importam e of the countrywoman ’s position has been understood, and that a definite j effort is being made to help her to meet her existing responsibilities better, and to adapt herself to changing conditions so as to extract maximum personal satisfaction from rural life while rendering the greatest possible service to agriculture. The historical retrospect is somewhat discouraging if voluntary agencies, such as the Women’s Institutes, are left out of account. The Agricultural Education Conference of 1915 presenting the first Government report ever issued on agricultural education for women in England ami Wales, pointed out that the system of agricultural education in this country had been built up mainly rements of men. and that, with very few exceptions, the instruction available for women consisted of ■ men’s instutions which admitted women to the whole or part of their courses, and (2) additional short couhses or classes for women which wcr<- attached to institutions for men. The report goes on to say that its signatories realised that it was desirable and necessary that facilities for women should form, not an extraneous, but an int era I part of the general scheme of agricultural education, but they considered that this could be achieved without the complete neglect of the women’s point of view which had been so marked a feature of existing provision.