About

Dr. Sally Shortall, the project coordinator, summarises in this video what our project is and what its objectives are.

At the bottom of the page, you can find a more extensive article, in which Professor Shortall presents the project in detail.

By Sally Shortall, GRASS CEILING project coordinator

The EU has a longstanding commitment to achieve gender equality since the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Since then, this commitment has been reinforced numerous times with Charters and Equality Directives to advance equality between men and women. Despite this, inequalities persist between men and women in the labour market and in reproductive labour such as childcare, elder care and domestic responsibilities. There is a 16% gender pay gap in hourly rates, a 37% gap in pension rates, and 80% of all care across the EU is provided by women.

Agriculture and rural development policies are areas of particular deficit in terms of the EU’s goals for gender parity. 28% of agricultural holders are women but this masks wide variation. Where women do own farms, they are very small (Lithuania). Where farms are larger few women own land (5% in the Netherlands; 8% in Denmark). Women receive far less support from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), including finance, training and digital skills, and are not visible when the terms and conditions of the CAP are negotiated at Member State or EU level. There is a very limited understanding of women’s interests and needs in diverse rural contexts, whether coastal, remote, mountainous, or urban adjacent. As a consequence, support cannot take account of the specific needs of women in different regions or how gender relations operate in diverse local contexts. In general, women in rural areas find it harder to access funding for innovation and are hampered by a lack of availability of childcare services as well as care for older people.

The issue is not one of women’s ability, but rather cultural norms and unconscious structural exclusion. The EU is committed to gender mainstreaming and as such must encourage Member States to take this responsibility seriously to ensure women active in agriculture are represented in decision-making processes.

GRASS CEILING aims to play a key role in addressing the gender-responsive policy for agriculture and rural development by providing direction on how to render policies and support services which are more gender inclusive and responsive so that women can realise their potential to promote the socio-ecological transition needed. We will do this by: creating tools to improve policies that impact on agriculture and rural women innovators and providing and analysing the current situation of women vis-a-vis the megatrends in European agriculture and rural areas.

Women in farming are committed to socio- ecological transitions in agriculture and rural communities, such as energy efficiency plans for public spaces, investing in irrigation systems, and pasture-fed livestock practices. Women in rural communities also undertake initiatives that promote ecological values, engaging in waste management, sustainable energy production and consumption, eco building conversions, local food production and consumption, care for nature and biodiversity, and green tourism. They have also developed rural businesses which stemmed the depopulation of women from rural areas. In addition, rural women are pioneering social innovation and social entrepreneurship assuring the maintenance of essential services that are foundational for rural communities, demographically and socio-economically, by developing novel modes of service delivery in which public and private partners participate and formal and informal contributions associate.

GRASS CEILING is working to develop a context where women can drive socio-ecological transitions, that is, develop innovations in response to socio-ecological challenges and strengthen the resilience of rural areas. This work will be implemented through: gender-led multi-actor co-creation through Living Labs and co-creating knowledge of gender norms and the drivers/ enablers of women-led innovation.

GRASS CEILING has been active since the beginning of 2023 and is already bearing fruit. The women in our Living Labs are pioneering new approaches, developing innovations and co-learning through mutual support. They’re not simply breaking the grass ceiling; they’re sowing the seeds for future generations of women to lead rural development and agricultural innovation.