MAREE Crawford leads by example every day she turns up to work.
As the northern zone technical services manager for Elders, Ms Crawford heads up the technical platforms and agronomic teams for northern NSW and Queensland.
She is also a board director of Queensland Crop Research and the chair of the Australian Summer Grains Conference.
Recognised by multiple Women in Agriculture Awards, Ms Crawford believes more work was required to reach gender equality in agriculture.
“If we go back 20 years ago, there was quite a good representation of female agronomists throughout the industry,” she said.
“Then as family life intervened they dropped out to pursue new challenges.
“For the next fifteen years we had a male dominated industry.
“However, if we look at the new intake of Elders graduate agronomists, we are 98 per cent female.”
Ms Crawford said she thought this turnaround was a result of continual advocacy through a number of forums and conferences.
“I’m hoping the positive messages we have sent to young women in the industry is sustained,” she said.
“That it won’t be cyclical and dwindle.
“We are still a long way off that message being consistent,” she said.
“We go through stages where we really focus on it and we get a great result.
We are still a long way off that message being consistent.
- Maree Crawford
“Then we tend to forget about it for a while, we achieve the goal, see great females coming through then not continue the momentum or program.”
Ms Crawford said flexible working conditions was an area the industry needed to concentrate on.
“We’ve had flexible conditions for quite some time, but it doesn’t seem to be the big driver in agriculture,” she said.
“I see that it is in other industries and it should be in agriculture, but we don’t promote it enough.
“You can work from anywhere today with technology, however in agronomy, most of our workforce is very centrally based. Not many work from home, I think that is cultural.”
Ms Crawford said increasing the number of females in managerial and hiring positions would definitely have an impact on gender equality at the grass roots.
“That engenders a different mindset throughout the whole company,” she said.
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