As part of her work for Grodan, Marketing Director Gonneke Gerkema is often the only female in management teams. For herself, her daughter and future generations of women, she has a personal wish to see more gender equality in the workplace. “Moreover, various studies show that a better gender balance is also good for business,” she says. To play an active part in making a difference, she recently joined the Gender Alliance for Innovation in Agriculture (GAIA) on behalf of Grodan. To tie in with this, we asked some of our other female colleagues to share their experiences of being a woman in horticulture.
Shanna Riser, Account Manager in the USA, has been working in the industry for over two decades. Here, she reflects on how things have changed (for the better!) from a female perspective – and are set to further improve, with the next generation of young women already poised to come up through the ranks.
In my role as account manager, I have extensive face-to-face contact with our end customers – high-tech growers – as well as our dealers. Although horticulture is still a male-dominated industry, things have definitely come a long way since when I first entered the industry around 20 years ago. As a relatively small, blonde woman, I stuck out a mile. In fact, based on some of the surprised reactions I got back then, it was as if I had purple skin or something! That never fazed me at all, because I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy. Raised with an older brother, it feels perfectly normal for me to be in the company of males. And thankfully, the fact that I’m female no longer seems to be an issue for the men I encounter professionally nowadays.
I think much of that progression has been part of a natural evolution. After all, in the early days of the greenhouse industry, it was a fairly dirty job involving hard physical labour – not a particularly attractive prospect for most women! And at that time, many women weren’t even participating in the job market.
High percentage of female students
Since then, a rising number of women have started working in horticulture. And why shouldn’t they? For the past few generations, girls have been raised to believe that we can do anything we want. That now seems to be paying off. For example, Grodan is in the early phases of doing some hydroponic stone wool trials in conjunction with a local university’s agricultural programme, and I’m very encouraged to see the high percentage of female students who are poised to come up through the ranks.
Besides that, the advancements in technology and automation that have facilitated precision growing mean that greenhouses themselves are much cleaner, computer-controlled and data-driven environments nowadays. Keeping everything running smoothly no longer depends on physical strength. I know of at least one high-tech greenhouse run by a woman right here in Maine!
Roles suited to women’s natural talents
And even if you don’t have green fingers or a degree in biology or horticulture, there are still many other roles that allow you to still be part of this industry. I’m a prime example of this! I actually studied psychology originally. But after joining my previous employer – a distributor of gardening supplies – over 20 years ago, I seized the opportunities to learn about all aspects of the industry: from customer service, sales and marketing to operations and logistics. Plenty of those roles require talents that many women often display naturally, such as creativity, curiosity, organizational skills and communication skills. In a sales role like mine, it’s important to be a good listener to understand each grower’s needs and figure out how our solutions can help to address them.
Constantly learning
Of course, my previous experience helped me to secure this role just over a year ago. But the great thing about a company like Grodan is that if you come from a different industry, they provide training to help you understand the basics, such as what a substrate is, what root zone management is, and how stone wool growing media support plant growth and health.
It’s not hard to get to grips with, but if things ever get too technical, you’re backed by a great team of experts who have in-depth knowledge in a particular crop or technique. As a result, you’re constantly learning and no two days are the same – which suits me perfectly, because I get bored easily.
Networking opportunities
Ultimately, I believe that the lack of awareness about all the different roles available in horticulture is the main reason why women are still underrepresented in the sector. That’s why it’s great that Grodan has joined GAIA, because such initiatives can hopefully trigger more women to consider a career in this industry, and facilitate more networking opportunities to help them make the switch.
A word of warning: working in agrifood can make you a bit of a ‘food snob’ – I’ve become a lot more conscious of what I feed to my family! But joking apart, I find it very rewarding to work in an industry that contributes to providing access to safe and healthy food and medicinal products for so many people around the world. So my message to all women out there is: just do it!
