FARM SCENE: Women breaking through 'glass ceiling' on the farm

Editors Note: Judy McClaughry, quoted below, is a past president of Oregon Women for Agriculture.

JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press Writer

Sunday, April 18, 2004 (04-18) 22:45 PDT (AP) -- Leisa Boley-Hellwarth sees herself as an equal partner on her family's western Ohio dairy. She does her share of the milking, and deals with vets and sales people.

But it can be a struggle to get others to see her that way -- like the machinery salesman who wouldn't let her write a check without her husband's approval.

Often, she says, "The first words out of their mouth is 'Is your husband home?"'

The number of women managing American farms has been increasing steadily. It rose 13 percent -- to 236,269 -- between 1997 and 2002, according to the latest census from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Nowadays, about one of every 10 farms is run by a woman.

Women have always worked on the farm, doing chores or keeping the books, but now more are deciding what equipment to buy, selling their crops and trading commodities.

"What surprises me is that women were locked into those traditional roles for as long as they have been," said Judy McClaughry, who took over the family's onion farm in Oregon when her husband took another job. "In the business world, they would call it the glass ceiling."

Farmers cite a number of reasons for the increase:

* More women are operating greenhouses and vegetable farms that cater to a growing segment of agriculture that markets directly to consumers.

* Many farmers have to take an off-farm job for extra income and health benefits, often leaving the wife to become the primary operator.

* More daughters are returning home when their parents die or can't keep up with the demands on the farm.

* Women are taking over the operations after their husbands die. Whether they do the work themselves or rent the land to a neighbor, they are still considered the primary operator.

Statistics support the idea that more widows are keeping their farmland.

Of the women who list themselves as the principal operator of all U.S. farms, about three out of 10 are 65 or older, according to the census. Only a fraction are 34 or younger.

Peggy Clark, who runs a 5,500-acre grain operation between Dayton and Cincinnati with her husband, Mike, rents farmland from 15 women who are either widowed or divorced.

Clark said it's unusual to find a woman who manages her own farm without any help. "We're still in kind of a transition period between the old way and the new way," she said.

Some widows keep their farms because they must pay capital gains and estate taxes if they sell, said Ina Selfridge, president of Women Involved in Farm Economics, a national group of about 1,000 members.

"She can't afford to divest the property, and therefore she becomes a farmer at that point," said Selfridge, who lives on a cattle ranch in Burdett, Kan. "If I were widowed, I'd stay right here."

Women Involved in Farm Economics sued the federal government in the early 1990s and forced it to allow wives to receive farm subsidies for land they owned.

Previously, only women who were not married to a farmer were allowed to get the payments. The farm bill had considered the farmer and his wife as one person.

Selfridge said women on the farm "want to be treated just like a man. They don't want to be patronized."

But it still happens.

Boley-Hellwarth, an attorney who works at home on her dairy farm near Celina, Ohio, said she has found that not everyone has overcome those gender stereotypes.

She'll tell a salesman who insists on speaking to her husband to look at a calendar and remind him that women are allowed to own land now.

She learned long ago that farming wasn't just for the men.

"My mother could do everything my dad did," she said. "There's so much that goes on in a daily basis. Everybody does what they can until we go to bed for a few hours."

Linnea Kooistra, who runs a 1,200-acre grain and dairy operation with her husband, Joel, in Woodstock, Ill., said she hopes the agribusiness industry starts taking note that women often are making the decisions.

She's noticed a few advertisements that show a woman driving a tractor or a combine.

"I think that's changing," she said. "I think it needs to change more."