Some women veterinarians have been refused admission to farms and 31 per cent have experienced discrimination within their profession, a report has revealed.
The report, presented last weekend to the Irish Veterinary Congress in Ennis, Co Clare, shows that despite increasing numbers of women coming into the profession, it will be 2019 before the numbers of male and female vets are equal.
Compiled by Dr Donal Connolly, a Galway-based vet, the report says in recent years the majority of veterinary students have been women. But because the profession traditionally has been male, it will take 19 years for the number of registered vets to show real numerical equality.
Dr Connolly's studies found that 31 per cent of women vets reported discrimination within the profession. This usually took place at job interviews.
He said 42 per cent of male vets had witnessed discrimination against women vets. He said there were cases of farmers refusing to allow women vets on to their farms to treat animals, and there was discrimination in meat plants. The most startling finding in the report was that 21 per cent of the women vets had told him they were being paid less than their male counterparts.
The congress, attended by more than 300 delegates, also heard an appeal from an expert on tuberculosis in badgers, who is attempting to find an island anywhere off Ireland with a badger population. Mr Paddy Sleeman said his team had managed to vaccinate populations of badgers by feeding them the BCG vaccine on chocolate and peanuts.
Contrary to common belief, he said, badgers will share food and an 80 per cent success rate had been achieved in the vaccination programmes he was involved in.
Vaccination of animals in the wild had proved very successful elsewhere, he said. In France, for example, the government had wiped out rabies in foxes this way.
Mr Sleeman said that he was not sure how the disease was transmitted between badgers and cattle, but he believed that tuberculosis did not survive for very long in badger setts because of the environment there.
Ireland's women have a key role to play in the rural economy, according to the Minister of State at the Department of Food, Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Noel Davern.
Speaking at a meeting in Rome on the role of women in agriculture, he said problems of economic dependency, isolation and lack of opportunity conspired to reduce the influence of women in rural areas.
He said a new committee will address the problems of women farmers.