Farm work is considered to be a physically and mentally demanding career. It’s been associated with high stress levels and anxiety. The job means long hours in sometimes harsh conditions. A recent University of Michigan study found that farm work has specific difficulties for women.
The study’s results found that women farmworkers are primarily facing five dimensions of heightened occupational stressors. These areas include gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, reproductive health concerns, pregnancy challenges, and work-life balance issues.
Alexis Handal, U of M associate professor of epidemiology and global public health, contributed to the study.
“We are finding exploitative conditions that are unique for women farmworkers around issues of sexual harassment, exposures during pregnancy, challenges with obtaining and having access to proper hygiene and sanitation, particularly during menstruation, and also really important aspects of work-life balance and child care issues that women farmworkers in particular face,” Handal said.
From September to December 2019, Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos, a research investigator in the U of M School of Public Health and a native Spanish speaker, interviewed 35 farmworkers in Michigan, 20 of whom were women and 15 of whom were men. Then, a research team analyzed the interview data, which was collected as part of the Michigan Farmworker Project.
Handal said the study aimed to bring some light to the issues farmworkers throughout the state face.
“About a third of migrant seasonal farmworkers in the United States are women, but they're often even more invisible than farmworkers in general, which are already [a] quite invisible and marginalized workforce,” Handal told Michigan Public.
The percentage of women working in the agricultural section in the U.S. has increased in recent years, and this trend is expected to continue. In 2022, the latest year data were available, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that about 26% of farmworkers in the U.S. are women.
Most previous research on work conditions for farmworkers in Michigan focus on the whole working population rather than specific obstacles for women. That’s what makes this study unique, Handal said.
Participants in the study said they generally felt that there was equal treatment in physical work standards for female and male workers. Men and women received similar tasks and were subject to the same productivity quotas, even if the women were pregnant.
It also found that women frequently reported inappropriate behavior from male workers. Some participants expressed that they felt objectified and harassed during work. Women who were married or partnered mostly reported that they did not experience sexual harassment and felt more protected because they worked with family members, such as a husband, or with other families.
Participants also described a “culture of silence,” according to the study, because victims of assaults were blamed for being too friendly with male workers or supervisors. The women who were victims of such assaults said they did not want to report the crime because of a fear of retaliation or because they felt vulnerable due to their immigration status.
Another concern of the farmworkers interviewed was that women had inadequate access to bathrooms, which were sometimes miles away from farmworkers taking breaks. Participants cited needing to delay urination for hours and facing consequences such as frequent urinary tract infections and other health issues related to the bladder.
Participants also mentioned that there were additional challenges for women because they were considered the primary or only caretakers for their family. They faced issues with finding accessible child care.
Women who participated in the study said they often did not share their pregnancy status with employers because of a belief that pregnant women in the industry are often denied work. They said they feared being fired or having hours reduced because agricultural workers are held to high productivity standards.
“Nonetheless, collectively, access to prenatal care seemed to be a concern as none of the pregnant women had paid time off to lessen the financial impact of attending these clinical appointments,” the study read.
Handal said the study found areas for improvement in the Michigan agricultural industry and suggested changes that would support women farmworkers and alleviate some dimensions of these work stressors.
“One big area that potentially could be an area to focus on at the state level is how can we empower women farm workers to have more opportunities for leadership positions, and how can they be supported in those positions so that they don't feel that they have to follow what the male leadership is doing,” Handal said. “That they feel that they are truly empowered to support women workers whom they supervise.”
Handal also said the study’s findings suggest that more research should be done to understand the needs of women farmworkers in Michigan. The study also emphasizes that previous federal legislation protects pregnant workers in various industries, including the agriculture industry. Other policies, like Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, protect workers against hazardous working conditions.
However, the application of these laws to migrant and seasonal women farmworkers is unclear, as is whether they are benefiting from these policies, Handal said.
“I think there is a lack of policy [that aims] to focus on the pregnant worker and on the woman worker, generally speaking, and so we need to first understand how the current policies even translate for this group of workers,” Handal told Michigan Public.
Michigan’s agriculture industry contributes more than $104 billion annually to the state economy. The state leads in the production of crops like asparagus, black and small red beans, marigolds, and squash.
