Female Scots farmer baffled by “sexist” UCAS form that lists “farmer’s wife” as occupation but not “farmer’s husband”

Kate Rowell was taken aback at her discovery while helping son Michael, 16, fill out his UCAS university application form earlier this month.

The 49-year-old couldn’t believe her eyes when she found an option of “farmer’s wife” on the drop down menu for occupation selection.

The farmer from Peebles, Scottish Borders, operates a farm alongside her husband Ed, 57, but was dismayed that farmer’s husband wasn’t a choice.

Kate took photographs of the online application which asks for the applicant’s parents‘ occupations to determine the primary income-earner.

The mum-of-four took to Twitter to convey her anger shortly afterwards, writing: “I’m very proud to be married to a farmer – and so is my husband – but this drop down box on my son’s @ucas_online form got me a bit miffed.

“No ‘farmer’s husband’ option.

“No other job of any kind suffixed by either husband or wife.

“No wonder it can feel like an uphill struggle.”

Her post has gained over 200 likes and dozens of comments from shocked readers.

Laura Welch said: “So disappointing.

“I’m a farmer in my own right, luckily I’ve not encountered any sexism as I run one site and my boss (who doesn’t give a monkeys about gender) runs the other.

“I look after 20,000 hens and lamb 300 sheep on site so don’t even get to sit in a tractor all day.”

Alan Laidlaw said: “Is this going to be an example of discriminatory nonsense every day? #disappointing

“Come on @ucas_online you are involved in the key time around young people’s career and life decisions – this is just not good enough.”

Clive Phillips said: “Unbelievable. Curious that an occupation is defined by marital status let alone the gender point.

“Presumably spouses of every other occupation will also have a drop down box?”

Criona Courtney said: “That is just unbelievable in this day and age.

“At the recent Young Farmers Awards it felt like an even split of both genders across the finalists so this is very outdated indeed.”

And Melissa Donald commented: “I would be miffed too.”

Speaking today, Kate said: “I was helping to fill out Michael’s UCAS form, and Ed and I are both farmers so I said to type that in, but then the drop down box appeared.

“I couldn’t really believe that was one of the options.

“UCAS did reply to my tweet and said the list of occupations they use comes from the Office for National Statistics.

“We still have a fair way to go in terms of this sort of thing though.

“It’s low level, usually unintentional sexism, but if it isn’t highlighted then all these little things add up and might eventually contribute to a woman deciding farming isn’t for her.

“We really need new people to enter agriculture and that means appealing to everyone, not just 50% of the population.”

A ONS spokesperson today said: “‘Farmer’s wife’ was added in the 2000 revision of the coding index of the Standard Occupational Classification to aid auto-coding of occupations in the 2001 Census because evidence would have suggested it was being given by enough people as their occupation to need an entry.

“This has remained the case since – in the 2011 Census, roughly one in seven women farmers gave ‘farmer’s wife’ rather than classifying themselves as farmers in their own right.”

After being asked if they would consider adding “farmer’s husband” to their occupations list, the ONS today said: “The ONS updates the Standard Occupation Classification periodically to represent the evolving labour market, and we will certainly consider adding new job titles where there’s evidence that particular titles are being used.”