About This Project

Californian farms are traditionally male dominated workplaces but they are increasingly relying on female laborers. Changing the diversity of a workforce can impact the functioning of work teams, affecting efficiency and worker satisfaction. I wish to understand how the recent influx of female workers is affecting vineyard teams. This will allow me to make recommendations as to how these women can be successfully integrated, to benefit both vineyard efficiency and worker satisfaction.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

The numbers of male agricultural workers in California has recently been decreasing causing labor shortages. In 2016, I carried out a survey of Napa vineyards that revealed the proportion of women working as laborers rose from 10% to 25% since 2010. If a workforce has a minority gender, single gender domination of leadership, and gender diversity is rapidly changing, team functioning can be detrimentally impacted. However, if a workforce becomes more gender balanced over an extended period, team functioning can benefit. The recent gender shift has not extended to managers. Thus, there may be very real challenges to the integration of new female workers as the gender diversity of the vineyard workforce transitions, with consequences for vineyard productivity and worker satisfaction.

What is the significance of this project?

With more than 4 million acres planted in California, specialty agricultural crops contribute nearly $30 billion to the California economy, and employ more than 300,000 workers. This industry continues to rely heavily on hand labor performed by workers but the recent labor shortages are impacting farming practices, which integration of more women into the workforce could help address. This project evaluates the impact of gender composition on vineyard team functioning, an understanding of which can help improve efficiency and worker satisfaction. This project is also unique in that it would represent the first investigation into the effects of gender diversity on agricultural teams. We hope the results may also be generalizable to agricultural teams working with other crops.

What are the goals of the project?

The overall goal of the project is to develop recommendations for best practices to integrate women into agricultural teams, to the benefit of both workers and organizations. To meet this goal, we will conduct a study of vineyard teams in Napa that will be a standalone experiment but also act as pilot research for a more extensive project. Initially we will consult with vineyard experts to develop a suitable protocol to evaluate vineyard teams. We will then recruit a sample of teams, assess their work performance and the quality of their team interactions, and relate their performance to team gender composition and the gender diversity of the wider workforce. We hope to discover if, why, and how vineyard teams may function differently according to gender composition.