This is part two of the second conversation in our IWCA Conversation Series. This segment is taken from a digital roundtable held July 2026 with four honourees from the 2026 Influential Women in Canadian Agriculture program and moderated by agriculture editor Kaitlin Berger. For information on the honourees and the background of the Influential Women in Canadian Agriculture program, click here.
The honourees featured in this conversation are:
- Coreen Franke, Nutrien Ag Solutions
- Wen Chen, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
- Margaret Hudson, Burnbrae Farms
- Andria Jones, University of Guelph
This transcription has been edited for clarity and length.
On breaking barriers
Kaitlin Berger: What are some of the major barriers that you faced in your career? What are the barriers we’re facing in agriculture? And how do you manage them or how did you manage them?
Andria Jones: Well, I guess that’s huge. I’m sure there’s going to be a ton of different answers there. In tying it into this award, this recognition being influential women, if I can speak from a gendered perspective that we recently had a paper published out of our lab that looked at farmer mental health through a gendered lens. And that particular paper was led by Dr. Briana Hagen, who’s at the Canadian Centre for Agricultural Well-Being, and it’s based on work she did when she was a PhD student and postdoc in my research group.
We found that women farmers described persistent struggles to be recognized as farmers, perhaps being looked at as the farmer’s wife or just not being looked at as a farmer at all. And we can see that in gender-assumptive language and in the photos that are commonly used to portray farming in Canada, and this can serve to undermine women farmers’ identity as farmers and as important to agriculture, and that, in turn, contributed to stress, right?
We also found that, we’ve done now three national surveys. We do them every five years. We just finished data collection for the third one, and we found that women farmers scores for stress, depression, anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and cynicism are all higher, statistically significantly higher than in their men counterparts.
And during research interviews, when we talk to women about the lived experience and stressors that they face, probably unsurprisingly to everybody on this call that, the triple shift that many women in farming experience. So, they’re likely doing on-farm work and directly involved with farming in the field or in the barns, but also often are the ones doing like bookkeeping and paying bills, may or may not also work off the farm in order to continue farming.
And then they have all of the unpaid household duties. They tend to be the ones primarily responsible for raising children, getting meals on the table, getting laundry done, getting kids to practices and school and etcetera, etcetera, and so this triple shift where there’s all of these multiple jobs, oh, not to mention elder care and things like that, that has a really big toll on women and often feeling like all of their many roles and many jobs are undervalued or unrecognized, right?
And so we found that, yeah, farming women’s contributions remain undervalued and that further strains the stressors and mental health experiences that farmers, regardless of gender, might experience. And so, for me, I would say that’s a huge barrier, just one of many, but a huge barrier that is facing Canadian agriculture, and when we look to the fact that we are talking about two per cent of the population that’s farming, it sure makes sense to me to reduce some of the barriers that people are experiencing when they are in farming and want to stay there.
Margaret Hudson: I’ll certainly say that going to industry meetings, like if you look at the leadership and a lot of the agricultural industry associations, it’s still very male dominated. Like it’s not balanced, there might be like, a few women in there, but less than 20 per cent. So, you can see in the leadership of the associations, at least the ones that I’m part of.
Coreen Franke: Yeah, I don’t disagree with that. I think it’s getting better. I do think it’s getting better from when I started 30 years ago. You know, I see some of those advisory boards and women becoming more prominent in those roles, but it’s certainly not even. And I would agree the gender gap is huge, but not just in farming. That’s just women in general, in every other sector, as well.
And it’s tough because really, we’re still, to some degree, living in a patriarchal society where that discrimination is ingrained. And so, how do you change that? It’s social change. How do you change those thoughts so that women can move forward and break down some of those barriers in agriculture and other sectors, as well? Like, I mean, that’s an uphill battle because it’s social change.
AJ: Well, I agree to some extent it’s social change, but I mean, there’s also easier solutions, right? The people who are putting out ag newsletters or magazines or requesting farmers for stories can start inviting more women. They can start taking photos of more women. They can start asking more women for their opinions, right? So that doesn’t require broad, sweeping societal change.
CF: No, understood. And change always happens in small increments. Obviously, it starts with awareness and education and then goes from there. But when you’re talking about those things, why isn’t it happening now? I still feel that it’s still really a male-dominated industry to some degree, as you mentioned. You know, and what we need is more men buying into supporting women. And I feel actually, and sad to say that, that progress that maybe we were making is starting to get a little bit reversed in recent years. And so how do you make headway? It’s two steps forward, one step back, maybe two steps back in some cases, and it’s frustrating. So how do you address that gender inequality when the men aren’t buying in or the men at the top, the top dogs, aren’t buying in?
MH: I agree with you, like, 100 per cent.
CF: How do you get that to change? I think, and I don’t know, maybe Wen will agree or not, but from the science end of things, when I first started, again, the majority of agricultural positions, the scientists, the agronomists, were mainly male – now, 30 years later, within my company anyway, and I’m not sure it’s quite at 50 per cent yet, but there are a lot more women in those roles. And so that change is starting to happen. It’s just not as quickly maybe as we need it to happen.
So I think the shift is starting, the change may be starting, but still it comes down to we got to get the men to buy in and support this. How do you do that?
And I also see a lot more female graduate students that are in in agriculture now. You go to a conference and you see the number of student presentations that are given and often there’s more women than men now doing that, more young women that are getting into this field. So I think the shift is starting, the change may be starting, but still it comes down to we got to get the men to buy in and support this. How do you do that?
MH: I’m again going back to some of the associations, like they’re industry, it could be like, I’m thinking of even within the ag industry, there are different councils and things. And I do believe what you’re saying is very true. Like there has to be a decision made that you’re going to start to shift the board composition of the associations, and when they start to do that, I also agree with something else that you said, there’s a lot more women being graduated in, say, the scientist community. So there’s more eligible female women available to do jobs. And women reaching higher ranks that have the experience required to maybe get asked to join that board seat.
I do think that maybe those of us within who are kind of sitting there observing that within these associations should be starting to put pressure on the leadership of those associations to shift their leadership compositions, to consciously try to add more different multicultural groups and more gender balance. I think we probably could start to push that from where we sit to try to push the change that we’d like to see. But I do agree with you, though, that the leadership at the top has to make the choice that they want to shift for more gender balance.
CF: And I don’t think they want to, is what the problem is.
MH: I agree with you.
AJ: One of the studies that I’ve got going on right now is where we’re looking at farmers’ mental health and within the context of changing climate amongst equity deserving groups. So, we’ve got several different cohorts of farmers that were doing research interviews. So, one is women, a second is Black farmers, a third is LGBTQIA+ farmers, and then we also have a fourth cohort with Mennonite and Amish.
And like looking at the experiences of Black and LGBTQIA+ farmers, I can certainly say, now, it’s not a representative sample, this is a qualitative research interview sample where we’re looking for depth of information rather than breadth or representativeness. But my goodness, we have met a whole lot of Black and queer farmers who are first-generation farmers in Canada and very much want to get into farming and are trying to get into farming and are facing a lot of barriers. And when we’re seeing farm attrition and younger generations not wanting to take over the farm, and we all like to eat on a daily basis, if we want to talk about food sustainability and sustainability of agriculture, it makes perfect sense to me that, again, we want to start reducing some of the barriers to groups who want to be in agriculture and for various reasons or another face all of the barriers that farmers generally experience, but then also some additional barriers based on their identities and who they are.
And so, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. We need more women and more diversity in general around the board tables. And we’re still fighting with some groups where their name alone is still one gender. So, it’s a no-brainer to me.
MH: I don’t know if stuff is government initiated, it tends to have more balance because, but I think when it’s non-governmental, that’s where it can vary, right? I’m on like four or five boards and when it’s actually food manufacturing, it, when I first started doing, like I’m part of the Food Health Consumer Products Council, when I first joined that board, there was maybe one or two other female CEOs on the board, and now it’s probably 40 per cent. Like, it’s just really improved. Whereas when I’m more egg-industry oriented, it’s still very low percentage of women.
Wen Chen: Yeah, I feel that the senior scientist and the senior, the women in senior positions give, really could intentionally provide more opportunities to the younger women. I think that’s quite important. Like the nomination to this award. Most of us didn’t pursue it. It’s our colleagues that recognize our contributions and they, some of them volunteered to be the nominators. And I think that’s really showing how important that the society, the support each other.
I think really for me, I think that, I really appreciate that and I think it’s quite important. For me in the future, I will do the same to other younger colleagues and women, and I could provide options to them as well.
So because I’m the first-generation Canadian, during my career, I had to do my best to provide some jobs, even if it’s a short-term job, that’s for the younger scientists who are new to the country and I wasn’t able to find anything that can support their family. So, I feel that that’s quite important is we intentionally support the younger women in the field.
Another thing is I think I read somewhere to say that when men teach some strategies or a trade and then they will normally ask a question, like a promotion question: “So how high can this go?” And then when women do that, and people will ask: “Oh, how are you going to mitigate the risks?” So, I think sometimes there are different angles for exactly the same thing that the women propose.
So I think in my personal career, I probably, once or twice, I’ve been facing these kind of challenges that women are not taken as competitors when we are still junior. And when you start to grow up, when you start to achieve something, and then suddenly people are thinking you become competitors more. They’re taking you more serious.
And at that point, there are more challenges that we’re going to face. So I think that’s a positive thing, actually. I think that just means that this is a real world, that we’re not under anyone’s wing anymore. We become independent, we become mature scientists and mature professionals. And we become capable, or at least we develop the capacity to deal with these kind of challenges in life. So, I think I enjoy, I can clearly see how I’ve been treated and how I grow through not too long of, I mean it’s a long career, it’s mid-career, and I think in the future I’m going to continue facing different attitudes from colleagues, but I think it is fun. It’s a good thing that they take us serious and we are doing something that’s important.
Special thanks to Farm Credit Canada, gold sponsor of 2026 Influential Women in Canadian Agriculture.
