This woman’s place is on the farm

Molly O'Reilly

Traditionally the agricultural industry in Ireland has been male dominated, despite multiple women being born into farming families and mucking in on the workload.

Third generation farmer Sophie Bell’s roots are firmly planted in Virginia, where she is in a joint partnership on the family farm with her father. However, her reach extends far beyond the byre.

As a content creator Sophie has developed a huge following, both online and on social media. With around 90,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, Sophie posts’ concern misconceptions about women in agriculture daily.

Her enterprise involves contract rearing dairy heifers. Sophie rears the heifers and puts them in calve and returns them prior to calving. The 25-year-old has always had an interest in agriculture, and this only blossomed while in secondary school where she discovered people with similar interests. “I no longer felt ‘odd’ for not being the girlie stereotype that the rest of my peers were like growing up,” Sophie revealed.

Despite her clearly defined position on the subject, Sophie admits she has still experienced casual sexism.

Most of the comments have been directed at her through her social media. As she gained more exposure through social media and her number of followers grew, so too did the negative commentary.

While she takes some comments with a pinch of salt, there are others though that do still get under her skin.

“There were some jokes in the comments saying to go back to the kitchen,” says Sophie, recalling some of the replies to a recent post.

She has grown weary of tired misconceptions that revolve around the idea of a girl’s place being in the house and “not being able” to do the outdoors work.

Sophie suggests in many cases women have not been shown how to farm, but rather urged to fill the gap of a gate while their male counterparts do the so-called work.

CSO figures show the percentage of women working on farms was 20% or less from 1991 to 2020, compared to 80% or more for males. While the 2020 census stats confirm the sector remains male dominated, there has been some rebalancing. Out of 278,600 farmers nationally, 26.9% were female while 73.04% were male.

With agricultural courses in the past being male only, there is an upward trend of female participation in recent years. Sophie discussed her daily routine as she balances farm work, college work, and content creation.

“My daily routine would be emails, college, then go to work. Sometimes I have college work to continue or more emails or farm paperwork... weekends would then be spent doing time consuming farm jobs. Even though I’m organised I always feel like I’m catching up on something,” explains Sophie.

With regards to future changes in the sector Sophie emphasises the importance of hearing from younger generations trying to make their way in agriculture.

“There needs to be more opinions from the ground up, not just in Dublin - for example, the expectation for a woman to come home from work and then take on the domestic duties - the kids, cleaning, and cooking - is something that needs to change in agriculture. That would never be expected from a man,” she states.

“There will come a time in the future when no one want to inherit a farm because it is such a hard lifestyle compared to others.”