Women farmers in Slovenia

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15 October, World Rural Women’s Day

15 October was declared World Rural Women’s Day at the 1995 UN Conference for Women in Beijing. In the Beijing Declaration the conference set ambitious aims to improve the position of women all over the world. The objectives of the conference were to reduce poverty among women, to reduce violence against women, to improve the educational level of women and to reduce the economic and political inequality of women.

How many women farmers are there in Slovenia?

In the spring of 2008 there were around 40,000 women in Slovenia whose basic activity was agricultural activity, which is almost 9% of all economically active women in our country. To this must be added the women who in addition to their regular work also worked on the farm in the afternoon and on weekends; in the spring of 2008 their number was around 6,000.

In Slovenia around 75,000 agricultural holdings were engaged in agricultural production in 2007; they cultivated almost 490,000 hectares of agricultural land and had almost 440,000 livestock units. According to data from the Labour Force Survey, in these holdings the main or complementary work was carried out by 117,000 economically active people of both sexes.

Modest payment for hard work

In the spring of 2008 women farmers in Slovenia on average carried out almost 40 hours of work per week; unfortunately, there is no information about how much they earned. Most of them, almost two thirds, did not receive any direct payment for their work as they worked as unpaid family workers. According to data on personal income tax, women employed in agricultural activities in 2006 earned on average 220,000 tolars gross per month, which translated into euros would amount to almost EUR 920. At the same time, this amount represented only 76% of average monthly gross earnings earned in the same period by all economically active women together.

High age, low education

In the spring of 2008 the average woman farmer in Slovenia was over 52 years old, which is nearly two years more than ten years ago. As many as 6 out of 10 women farmers had only elementary education or less; however, in the last ten years education among women farmers has considerably improved since in the spring of 1998 the share of women farmers with elementary education or less was almost three quarters.

Lifelong learning

In the month before the interviewing more than 7% of women farmers were involved in one of the forms of formal education. Only 4% of women farmers were involved in informal education, i.e. they attended courses (tailor's, cooking, etc.), workshops, seminars, instructions, etc. Informal education is somewhat more widespread among all economically active people, since in the spring of 2008 around 13% of all economically active people were included in this form of education.

Agricultural work knows no rest

Women farmers work throughout the week. Only 10% of women farmers never work on Saturdays and only slightly more on Sundays. In the spring of 2008 around 20% of women farmers said that they never worked on the family farm on Sundays.

More than 70% of them usually or sometimes work in the evening, while 20% sometimes work at night and 80% never do.

Retired women farmers

According to the data collected this spring, a quarter of women farmers are retired. They are on average over 66 years old; most of them (75%) have elementary education or less. Compared to all women farmers, they carried out slightly less work per week, on average 36 hours. In May 2008 a retired woman farmer received approximately EUR 210 of pension: this was the average agricultural pension in Slovenia.