This article has been a long time coming. It started back in December and was originally meant to be just one page profiling Imelda Walsh and Erica O’Keefe, who had just been elected IFA county chairs in Tipperary north and Tipperary south respectively.

It was something of a watershed moment for women in the IFA. There was no county chair position held by a woman at the time and there was only one female on the IFA executive council, the chair of the farm family committee, which has an all-female membership.

In early January, Anne Baker was appointed chair in Cork north, so this space was upped to a page and a bit. With the election of Anne Mitchell in Galway and Elizabeth Ormiston in Cavan in February, the article stretched further again.

In just a few months there was a renaissance of women on the IFA executive council, which went from having just one woman on its board to now having six.

The tide turned and these five county chairs were to the fore in it. Irish Country Living discusses with each their involvement in the IFA. While the ladies speak on a variety of topics, the common denominator in each conversation is that all are most comfortable when discussing farming, and that in itself says something.

Imelda Walsh, Tipperary north

“You may say five female county chairs is small in comparison to the number of males on council, but from where we were with zero, it’s a huge, huge step in the right direction. I think the fact that there are five of us, that number will grow. It will give other females the courage to say, look, we can do this as well.

“In reality as women we need to be proactive in putting ourselves forward and getting out there. We bring the same to the table as any of the men, in that there’s no reason why there couldn’t be more women involved.”

Those are Imelda Walsh’s sentiments on female involvement in the IFA.

For Imelda, her experience in the IFA has been a very positive one: “I have never been treated any differently as a woman to my male counterparts, but that starts here in the yard. Anyone who comes into our yard would treat me the same as they treat my husband Tom,” she explains.

Imelda and Tom run a dairy farm just outside Nenagh. Even though Imelda is not from a farming background, since she got married 31 years ago she has taken to it like a duck to water.

Eight years ago, Imelda became secretary of her local IFA branch in Ballywilliam. After that four-year term she was appointed branch chair and county secretary simultaneously, before going on to hold her current position as county chair.

With conviction, she states that each of the five female chairs were elected on merit because they are seen within their counties as being “well able to do the job” and not because of their gender.

“I don’t think there is any other reason and I don’t think there is a thought out there that ‘we need to get more women in’. I think we are there purely on merit and not on gender. I would certainly not want to be chair because I was a woman. I want to be there because farmers in north Tipperary have confidence in me to represent them and their views at council.”

Erica O’Keefe, Tipperary south

Erica O’Keefe feels that women do a huge amount of work on farms: “Women are the backbone of a lot of farms and aren’t recognised for it. I’m farming on my own now, my mum helps me out every day. My sisters, if they are around, give me the odd hand too.”

Before becoming county chair, Erica was the IFA sheep rep for Tipperary south. A suckler and sheep farmer from Cashel, she has been involved in the day-to-day running of the family farm since she was 17, taking over completely in 2005.

Five female county chairs being elected is positive, she believes and she adds that each of the women elected will bring as much experience as their male colleagues: “It’s nice to see the IFA not being male dominated and it’s nice to see women coming on board as well. We bring experience as well to the organisation, all of the women that have been elected are involved in farming and are farming themselves.”

For any women considering getting involved in the IFA, Erica would advise them to go to the local meetings. “I would encourage them to go along to the meetings – a few women come to the south Tipperary executive meetings – because there are a lot of female members in the IFA. I would encourage women to come along to the executive meetings and get involved.”

Anne Baker, Cork north

Cork north chair Anne Baker sees no reason why in the future there could not be a female president of the IFA. On a lot of farms, from her experience, women are as involved as men and she believes that roles are no longer defined as being gender specific.

“It would be the woman that’s the driving force behind many a farm,” says Anne. “Really and truly she would be involved as much as the man. She mightn’t be out there doing all the work, but she would be very much hands on with calving, feeding and herding. There are shared roles now – men are great at minding children and making the dinners as well if their wife is working. It’s the same on farms now, everyone is kind of hands-on. There are no defined roles any longer and that’s the way it should be.”

Anne got involved in the IFA through her local branch in Mitchelstown. She first served as Cork north chair of the farm family committee, before going on to become county secretary and then taking up the role of county chair.

Women and men work well together on committees, Anne thinks. This was highlighted to her recently when she sat in on the environment committee for a colleague.

“There are four or five women on the environment committee and the dynamic is different when there is a mix and certainly it’s more natural. It would be the same for the farm family as well, it would be nice to see a few men joining farm family. Exclusivity, that’s not good,” explains Anne.

Anne Mitchell, Galway

Along with farming, Anne Mitchell had a successful career in the civil service, reaching managerial level in the Department of Agriculture and then latterly moving to become an inspector in the Department of Social Protection. Upon doing this, she was meeting farm families every day and realised the anomaly in relation to farmers’ spouses getting pensions.

“I lobbied after I retired,” says Anne of the situation. “I sat down and I wrote to every elected politician in this country about it and repeatedly wrote. Finally, Willie O’Dea took it on board. It’s now being recognised and it’s going to be dealt with. So I’m very happy about that. I would take on an issue and I would be like a dog with a bone until I saw it through.”

Anne’s late husband John Joe, who worked as a Department of Agriculture inspector for 44 years, founded the NFA branch in Menlough, where Anne farms beef and sheep. She began going to IFA meetings with her husband and also developed a relationship with the IFA though dealing with their queries in the Department of Agriculture. As well as having been county secretary and Galway farm family chair, Anne was also campaign manager to IFA president Joe Healy in 2016.

Anne says that she does not feel she has ever been treated differently in the IFA as a woman: “I have taken on what would be seen as predominantly male roles all my life. I started into farming very young. My father was paralysed from the neck down when I was about 10, he had multiple sclerosis. I was milking cows by hand and walking cattle to the fairs in Strokestown in my teenage years. It was always part of my daily life.”

Elizabeth Ormiston, Cavan

A suckler farmer from not far outside Carnaross, Elizabeth Ormiston got involved in the IFA through her son Peter, who was secretary of their local branch in Mullagh while he was completing the college end of his apprenticeship in Cork.

“Peter came home from Cork on a Thursday evening and he drove over to Kingscourt to buy some replacement heifers for me. He did it on one condition – the IFA meeting was on in Mullagh that night – that I would go in as IFA secretary, and I have held a position since.”

Elizabeth ran for Cavan county chair unsuccessfully four years ago and says she had no problem running again this time around. She believes that the support she received during the election was mostly from men and that women need to show more support for other women.

On the topic of a female IFA president, Elizabeth does think it is on the cards at some stage: “I think it will be a while, but it’s possible and I don’t see any reason why not.

“Women did manage the farms and they got no recognition,” says Elizabeth. “My role model would have been my grandmother. I remember her knocking sparks of a tinny bucket milking cows in the ’60s and she was over 70 years of age. She milked 10 cows every evening by hand.”

In the face of adversity, Elizabeth has proven to be exceptionally strong. Her husband Philip passed away in 2002 and less than a year later the cows tested positive for TB. Although this was an exceptionally difficult time and put paid to her dairying, she picked herself up and switched to sucklers.

Elizabeth then got into pedigree breeding and went on to have a winner with Macormis Twink at the Tullamore Society Show. Such is her pride in this cow, Twink is immortalised forever on eight tiles on Elizabeth’s kitchen wall. A reminder that there are always good days to come.