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• Trends
• Comparison of women farmers and manufacturers
• Entry into small business
• Maori women
• 3.7 Summary

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3.6 Women in self-employment and small businesses

The material for this part of the section has been drawn from a variety of sources. They include interviews with eight Southland women who are currently self-employed or own and operate a small business, and interviews with rural women in small businesses who received assistance from Business Development Boards (collected by Alison Gray of Gray Matter Research Limited).

Trends

Small businesses in New Zealand are one of the areas of greatest growth. A Department of Statistics (1993) report has noted that overall the numbers of small businesses have grown by 13% between 1981 and 1991. Within small businesses - that is, those employing up to five staff - employment has jumped by 43% in the past 10 years.

As a group, self-employed women are distinct from both female wage and salary earners and self-employed men. Self-employed women are more likely to be aged between 35 and 44 years. If self-employed women have dependent children the youngest is more likely to be under five. Like female wage and salary earners, the incomes earned by self-employed women vary (Gray Matter and Rivers Buchan Associates, 1993).

The number of self-employed women grew by 11.3% between 1986 and 1991, and the largest increases were in the finance, insurance, real estate and business industry, and in community, social and personal services. Female self-employment increased in all regions except Gisborne (where it remained the same) between 1986 and 1991, while 9 of the 14 regions recorded a fall in male self-employment. Small businesses run by women are as likely to survive as those run by men. In each occupational group, however, the median income for self-employed women was lower than for self-employed men (Gray Matter and Rivers Buchan Associates, 1993).

The size of small firms owned by women stayed much the same between 1986 and 1991, and women are still less likely to be self-employed than men. Self-employed women are less likely to have a tertiary qualification than men, and more likely to work from home. Self-employed pakeha women are more likely than self-employed women of other ethnic groups to have tertiary qualifications, own their own home, and work in agricultural occupations.

As noted earlier, the highest number of self-employed rural women are farmers. In 1991 self-employed women farmers were 72% of self-employed women in rural areas. The types of small business which farm, rural, small town women have entered into are as varied as the activities which farm women have started on their farms. They include jam, pickles, chutney, fruit drink making; goat or sheep cheese; mohair yarn production; rural tourism including homestays; audio-visual productions; clothes manufacturing and retailing; computer software manufacture; equipment and other manufactures; nut growing and processing; manufacturing natural skin care products and perfumes; consultancies; fitness centre; farm accounting businesses; real estate; and employment agencies.

Comparison of women farmers and manufacturers

A comparative study of rural manufacturing and farming (Pomeroy, 1993) provided information on the ownership and decision-making of women from 30 case studies of farm and rural businesses, in Southland, Wairarapa, and Waikato. Women were partial or co-proprietors in 60% of the factories and 76% of the farm businesses. Of the women proprietors, 78% of the manufacturers and 54% of the farmers have an active role in the business (including activities such as office administration, accounts, market research, production, hiring of staff, sales, purchases, design, management of some operations and staff, catering). On average the women proprietors worked fewer hours at the business than their male partners.

As a crude measure of the extent to which women were truly involved in controlling the business as opposed to working for it or being a non-participating partner, five parameters were studied: the woman was nominated as - a major business advisor; nominated as a major financial advisor; was frequently involvement in formal and informal business meetings; approved and signed business cheques; was involved in setting prices. On this basis 72% of the women manufacturers were actively involved in power sharing compared with 46% of women farmers, while a further 9% of women manufacturers and 31% of women farmers regularly attended frequent business meetings.

Entry into small business

There are many different stories behind rural women’s entry into and survival in small businesses. Some of the reasons why women became involved with self-employment or small businesses include: ^[The material was provided by Alison Gray of Gray Matter who interviewed women in small businesses for the Ministry of Commerce Suffrage Project, and by Mary-Jane Rivers in interviews with Southland women.]

Buying a business which they have either supplied or worked in.

• Patricia Batkin and Karen Porter had been supplying eggs to an egg distribution firm. When the firm went into receivership overnight it left the women with no distributors. They bought the firm and continued the business.
• A group of ten women who had worked for Lane Walker and Rudkin’s garment factory in Temuka, formed a company to carry on, when the factory closed in 1987.

Wanting a change in business or lifestyle.

• Rayleen Burrows and her husband bought the Rakaia Jam Factory after selling the supermarket which they had run in the same rural town. Jill Waterworth-Smith from Britain joined her husband in Clyde where they produce cut and dried flowers for local, national and export markets.
• Robin Moyle and Beverley Davy were based in Melbourne, and decided to move from the city lifestyle to a rural area. They bought a run-down macadamia orchard in Opotiki in 1988, and in 1992 they got a Business Development and Investigation Grant. They have since contracted a firm to produce a gift box of macadamia chocolates.
• Chris Jaimeson started her peony growing business in 1992. She has a Diploma in Horticulture and had worked as a Horticultural Inspector in the Hawkes Bay. Chris and her husband are joint partners on their Southland farm, but Chris wanted an interest of her own. Chris has gained a great deal of confidence and satisfaction from developing the business. If the family ever leaves the existing farm the peonies will be dug up and replanted on the new property.
• Julie Thomas started her cattle breeding business twenty years ago. She wanted an outlet for her skills independent of her husband’s family farm. Cattle breeding suited her interest in livestock and suited being based on a farm. Julie was still accessible to the children and able to do other farm work when need be. Stock agents and buyers still do not expect a woman to be in the cattle breeding business, but Julie has had strong support from her husband, who makes a point of pretending not to know anything about Julie’s business. This forces people to deal directly with Julie. The supportive home base has made all the difference.

From a previous hobby and interest.

• Marnie Kelly of Alexandra started a business manufacturing mohair blended with natural wool.
• Helen Hicks and a partner formed Rural Tours after both had hosted overseas visitors and knew that people from overseas liked to stay on New Zealand farms.
• Kate Standen started her flower distribution business after selling miniature roses to local florists on behalf of her mother. She now has two chiller trucks in operation, is an employer, and distributes flowers to Christchurch and Whangarei from Levin.

No work available in the area and the need to create opportunities.

• Rachel Garden and her husband began Cashlink in Wales in 1982. As there were few employment opportunities in the area they had to create them for themselves, so they began writing computer software to order. They established a distribution network first in Britain and then in New Zealand. In 1987 they came to the Coromandel in New Zealand and took over distribution themselves. Research and development is still done at home in the Coromandel, and much of their international business is undertaken by fax.

Seeing an opportunity or a market gap.

• Liz Smolenski investigated the potential of developing an audio-visual tourist attraction in Queenstown, and opened the successful show Sheep County — Sight and Sound.
• Sue Walker began packaging pure New Zealand honey for the local and tourist market in the 1980s. She has diversified into jams, and has a contract with a Japanese agency who will promote her product.
• Jenny Scott runs a computer business in Gore, and lives on a farm. When GST was first roduced Jenny enrolled in computer and accountancy courses and learnt how to formalise the farm accounts. Word of her competence spread and she was asked to teach other farmers how to use their computers and software packages in order to get their accounts organised. This snowballed, and Jenny set up an office in Gore. For Jenny, being ‘local’ was an advantage — it gave her more credibility and meant she was trusted.

Maori women

Although Maori women were not interviewed in these studies, the publication Employment Matters (published by Community Employment Group) identifies numerous successful businesses started and run by rural Maori women. Activities are diverse — from hairdressing through to utilising traditional skills such as harakeke (flax) weaving — and passing on these skills to others (Mawhera Weavers in Greymouth); from advising people who want to develop muliple-owned land for agriculture through to running a training school for the unemployed.

While many of the businesses started by rural women remain small with just the one woman involved, others women move quickly to employing three or four staff, and some expand to employing more than five people.

3.7 Summary

There have been marked changes in the nature of female rural employment between 1976 and 1986, and between 1986 and 1991. Like urban women, more rural women have entered the paid workforce, particularly the servicing industries. Increasingly, rural women have formally identified themselves as members of the farm workforce. Women are now far more likely to work off the farm, or in an alternative enterprise on the farm, than ever before, while still managing to spend time and energy on their families, their communities, and on the farm itself.

Participation by rural women in the primary industries, manufacturing, utilities and the building industry peaked in 1986, but in all other servicing industries, the participation of rural women continues to grow. The majority of rural women are in the full-time labour-force, but the part-time rural female labour force continues to grow.

A survey of rurally-based businesses undertaken for this report revealed low numbers of women in management positions. The ‘other services’ sector had, at eight percent, the highest proportion of women in senior positions. The numbers of rural women in self-employment continued to grow (by 11% between 1986 and 1991), but the median income for rural women in this group was below that of rural self-employed men.

There are many examples of creative business initiatives rural women have established, either on their own or in association with others. The main barriers for women entering self-employment or small businesses include the lack of: child care provisions, capital, information, business skills and resources, lack of confidence in their own abilities, other personal circumstances, and the attitudes and behaviour of some service providers.

Contact for Enquiries

Rural Affairs Coordinator
Sector Performance Policy
MAF Policy
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington
NEW ZEALAND

Phone: +64 4 894 0675
Fax: +64 4 4 894 0745
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