Young women’s empowerment in Scottish agriculture: the challenge of competing discourses

Women have started to feature more prominently in the Scottish agricultural industry, but despite recent government initiatives to encourage more young women into the industry, they continue to face barriers to pursuing their chosen career. Drawing on 16 semi-structured interviews, this article explores the views and experiences of young women entering or seeking to build a career in agriculture, in particular their perceptions of gender equality and empowerment in the sector. The findings indicate a dichotomy of discourses around gender equality in Scottish agriculture, and a conflict between the aspirations of the gender equality ‘movement’ and those who argue for a meritocracy in legitimising women's status in agriculture. We emphasise the importance of ‘framing’ that is at the core of these diverging views and propose that framing is considered as part of an additional ‘pre-awareness’ stage to the conceptualisation of empowerment. This article reinforces earlier research that indicates that the greatest barrier to young women's empowerment within Scottish agriculture is access to land and patrilineal succession, as well as the expectation that women must demonstrate capability before they are accepted as legitimate actors. Contrary to this, we found resistance among this group of young women to policy interventions that seek to support the ‘women in agriculture’ movement, considering this as counter to their goal of normalising the role of women in Scottish agriculture. They also expressed diverging views on what roles in the sector would represent ‘empowered’ females. These competing discourses, evident within individuals and society more broadly, represent the different framings of empowerment. The choice of framing has implications for the success of policy interventions in Scotland to support greater gender equality in agriculture and internationally.