Over 30% of registered farmers in Greece are female. However, this “is not a very positive number” as these women do not have decision making powers, a Greek agricultural professor has said.

Associate agricultural professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Maria Partalidou, said in Greece female farmers are “present on paper, absent in reality”.

“The male in the family still makes the decisions, despite the fact that one-third of registered farmers are women,” she added.

The professor said according to research, the number of farms owned by women with decision-making powers is less than 10%.

Some 13.4% of farms in Ireland were female owned in 2020, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The reason why so many women in Greece own farms, Partalidou added, is because it is a common practice to split a farm between all of one’s children.

“In this way the land stays within the family. Everybody has an income, because all these young farmers – the daughter, the son – they get subsidies from the CAP,” she said.

In Greece there are no farm inheritance laws, making this possible.