DEAR SIR: Agriculture: ‘It’s all about jobs for the girls’ on agri boards and representative structures.

Your typical CV could read “Ambitious, vocal, high profile (past or present), degrees help and farming experience a slight advantage”. A lifetime of working on your farm will be a “slight advantage” as a means to gaining recognition on an agri board.

I attended the Dairy Women Ireland (DWI) conference representing Tirlán co-op women in October. A great day out!

A plan is in place by every agri business board in Ireland to ramp up their gender balance. It’s all about governance. Protecting our export market is at stake.

Katherine O’Leary, commenting on the recent National Dialogue event, said: “I worry that the voice of full-time farming women was possibly absent.”

Katherine was 100% correct, we are all busy helping in the yard or we weren’t eligible to attend. I read Siobhán Talbot’s contribution. As always, she was excellent, she addressed the gaping gap. Lip service won’t get women involved.

Our new communications manager in Tirlán attended with a male board member. No woman from the Tirlán elected representative structure attended.

Farming is a hard life for a woman, especially on her own. We can have all the technology and mod cons available, but there were jobs I never mastered ie. fencing and plumbing.

Our best chance of letting more women into the male dominated profession is the already familiar partnership, our wedding vows.

It’s lip service unless husbands put two names on a cheque book, milk statement, herd number etc.

Behind every good woman could be a good man. I had my dad, John G, my rock, and now Eoin and Diarmuid have taken the baton from us.

This whole topic has been around as long as I’ve been farming and I don’t see any easy solution.

Financial incentives will prove to be the best carrot. More of the 60% TAMS type of ‘sweetener’ for women in agriculture will help.

My past pupil Jane Mangan is a racing commentator. Isn’t she amazing? She ticks all the boxes, she made it on merit. Her knowledge of her industry is from the cradle.

My advice to the agri industry is to be grateful for the women that are involved and embrace them. A man’s world is no place for the faint-hearted woman.