Hi, hello, and howdy, and welcome back to Tiny Sidecar. I'm Kate, your host in Sidecar Sidekick, and today we're jumping into all things women in coffee numbers or statistics. So I think this episode is maybe my favorite so far, and it's probably because it was such a good refresher on some things that I may have forgotten or simply never learned. And as much as I love all the other episodes and diving into things that I've learned over the years, this was bright, fresh, and new. I think it's also important to note that I've recorded this episode a couple of times. The first time I was a bit of a sad girl, the second time just a little low energy, and this time I'm feeling really positive about it. Because here's the thing statistics can sometimes feel dark and gloomy, but they're only a part of the story. As much as that story is really good to understand and learn, um, sometimes it's just a sad day, you know? We're gonna jump into some things. This is very much the tip of the iceberg in a much larger conversation, but I'm excited to start it off with you today. So, should you grab your favorite cup of coffee and let's get into it? So glad to have you here. So, as Tiny Sidecar has evolved in the last few months, I mean, we're on episode nine and it's been three or so months since we started this thing. I started to think, uh, what have I missed in the first few months just getting this going? And it was very evident to me that I haven't even laid the groundwork to what women in coffee are. Um? Is us? So that was very clear in my brain that like this episode just needed to exist, just so that we're all talking about the same thing and have the same understanding. And in thinking about this, I was like, well, it would be good for me to understand who the women in coffee really are. What roles we play, how much work we do, what work we do, and where we're more prevalent in the supply chain, or where we're not prevalent. And so this episode was really sparked out of curiosity, which curiosity I think is one of the best traits to have as a human. The more curious you are, the more you'll learn. That's what brought us where we are in this moment today. And like I said previously, I'm really excited about this episode. I think that the way that I've enjoyed my coffee in the morning has been different since the first dive into some of these numbers. And I also will say that while I've looked these up online and found reputable sources for us to kind of look into, the other thing is I'm not a researcher, and these are just some articles that have been out in the last how many ever years. The main article that I used in gathering information is from the ICO, and it was from their 2018 study on gender in the coffee sector. Um, it's a really comprehensive, longer article about different facts, both on race, gender, all sorts of things, and the breakdown per origin. Um and I think that article is the one that made me sad the first time I read it. But then days after I really sat with information and I started to understand that women are more prevalent in coffee than I even realized a week and a half ago. And that makes me really proud of the hard work and just how many hands are in the pot making this business, this uh whole beautiful thing go round. And I think that actually ended up feeling much more special to me. Now, is that labor fairly paid or seen? Not always, and I think that's why episodes and podcasts like Tiny Sidecar have to exist, because the first step is really understanding the world around us, right? So the first piece of information that I really want you to take away are two key numbers, and the numbers are 70 and 30. So uh according to the ICO in 2018, but also other studies, about 70% of labor in origin countries on the farm is done by women. So women are out in the fields picking and doing a lot of this manual labor on farms. And what's really important to take away from the other side of that, which is the 30, is best case scenario, according to the study, was that 30% of land had ownership by women of coffee farms. Let me say that again. 30% of coffee farms were owned by women. And in some origins, maybe all origins, if you're looking for sole ownership, that number then decreases significantly. So in Mexico, it was above 30% as far as female-owned farms, but solely owned by a female down to 21%. Now, from country to country, things really varied. Some were below 20%, some were just above 30. And like I said earlier, 30 is the best case scenario, and sometimes even had a cosigner on it. The countries that had more women-owned farms were in Latin America and Mexico, and I think that's something to note. And it's also, I think, interesting to start thinking about why certain countries might have more women-owned farms. And there's a lot of different factors that come into play here. Um, financial ability to own or purchase, traditions in the family. We know that coffee farms traditionally are more generational, so they're handed down from one person to the next through the family. And it's definitely a factor of fathers passing down to their sons instead of passing down to their daughters. Or maybe there's more changing in those cultures where more women are stepping into those roles and wanting them. So I think that there's a lot of different factors as to why a country might have more female ownership than others, even legal reasons. Like when did it become legal for a woman to own land by herself in that country? So every country, like so many parts of coffee, really has its own factors politically, socially, and all the way boiling down to that family on whether or not a woman would inherit or be able to purchase her own land. The other factor that I want to talk about is the ICO report also talks about how it's about like if a man owns one acre, the woman is closer to owning about 0.75 acres. The thing here is not only is it that women own less coffee farms, but also the size of the farms tends to be about 25% smaller than uh male counterparts. This is important because one it starts to talk about the profitability of the farm. Um, they have less coffee trees and plants to harvest from, so their yields will be smaller. And then the other interesting statistic from this particular report was also that the health of the farm itself was much less, less quality, if you will, than their male counterpart. I think when we start to talk about gender in really anything, it can be sensitive for some people as to like, hey, don't go picking on men. And I don't think that that's at all what this is. I think that a week and a half ago, I didn't realize that women had such a key role in the labor at coffee farms. And understanding facts and understanding how genders might play a certain role in specific industries is interesting to pull apart. And then it also is like, I don't know, for me, I remember, and maybe I've already told you the story, but I remember the first coffee roaster that wasn't the one that I work for that I went to. It was owned by a man, and he was kind enough to let us come and see his roaster. And it was the first time I had ever seen something that wasn't what I was familiar to. And if I think we've talked about this, but I'm familiar to an almost female team of coffee roasters, which is not very normal in the coffee world. And so just going somewhere new, and I remember him saying, like, pretty early on to him giving us a tour, like, how do you guys lift the bags if you're all women? And just like that moment of I mean, it'll always stick with me because I feel like I just I don't know. I thought, like, come on, we can all lift heavy things, right? Um, but this is, I mean, working in the fields at a coffee farm is incredibly difficult, labor-intensive, heavy, demanding work. And so seeing other women doing really hard work um and incredible work, and knowing that like I'm right there beside you, also lifting coffee in other ways, there is like a bit of passion there and pride that I'm like, yeah, women can do difficult, hard things. So, bit of a tangent, but that is something that I will say that when I found out that statistic in the last week and a half, I was like, Yeah, women can do hard things, and crimin women absolutely make the coffee world go round. Could you imagine if we lost 70% of our labor force in coffee, how little coffee we would have to consume? Like, it's literally the majority of the industry is run by women. Now, I think when we look specifically at origin-producing countries, it's easy to be like, dang, that sucks that there's only 30% owned by women, but they're doing 70% of the labor. And here's where I think you can take this statistic and decide what you want to do with it. Now, I think that we as consumers and buyers ourselves hold a lot of power in supply and demand. I think a lot about the egg industry. And if you're familiar with the egg industry, I think it's the most fascinating thing that has happened in the US in a very long time when it comes to supply and demand. Where, I don't know, 10 years ago, having free range or like happy eggs, all these like egg brands that are so into making sure that chickens are in a better state, all came from consumers demanding free range and cage-free. Like, cage-free is not even really a thing anymore because so many people expect more than that. And that really came back to consumers asking for something and demanding it and only buying that and how it shifted. And so I think from a coffee standpoint, and especially when we are talking very specifically about having some more opportunities for women farmers, we as consumers, whether it's at the cafe level, the roasting level, the green buying level, can all be asking for female-produced coffee. This is something that I do in my job, where I mean, since we are a largely female team, I like to try to have as many female-grown or female-owned farm coffee as possible because it's passing down one opportunity from a bunch of women to like another group of women, right? I think opening doors for people is important. And so I know when I'm talking to my importers, and I'm like, hey, if you have something from a female farm, I would love to try it. I would love to see if it can work for our menu. And also now you know that that's something that I'm really looking for. And I want to hear about it and I want to be there to support these other women. So I am in a lucky position in the case that I get to buy green coffee. But again, if consumers were going into the cafe and going, hey, which of these coffees comes from female-owned farms or female-produced farms, then I think that would also put pressure on roasting companies and cafes to purchase that kind of coffee. And what we know is that the more that a consumer demands a product, the more that that is then funneled down and more opportunities are created because it's the thing that people are asking for. And people are willing to pay higher premiums to support more social and ethical sourcing. Because that's one thing that is often talked about is like 70% of the labor is being done by women, but these women potentially could not be getting paid for the labor or underpaid severely. They might be in a bad situation where like they're working on this farm and the conditions are not good, and it's their only opportunity. So the more that we look into how we can support producers and how we can create opportunities by simply asking for those opportunities to be created, I think is a really clear and easy way for us to start to shift what these statistics look like. Now, will it happen overnight? Absolutely not. But it's starting the conversation. And from research that's been done, one of the big reasons why people do research is because people started asking certain questions. And so I think this is our opportunity. If this is something that we want to see change and we want more opportunities given to women, let's start asking the right questions to the right people. Now, while we're talking about roasteries in general, I think that there's a lot of really interesting information about hospitality or like believe it or not, coffee is very gendered. And I think I see that really clearly as someone that's a female roaster, a female green coffee buyer, even a manager of a company. There's a lot of opportunity for women in things that are more like hospitality forward in the coffee industry. According to Starbucks from 2020, about 70% of their staff was women, but also 70% of their baristas were women. When I was looking in for more information about like female roasters and Q-graders and importers, what was really interesting is importers, there's like no information on how many of them are women, which importers is definitely a huge part of the coffee world, right? When it came back to roasters, it's actually grown significantly in the last 10 years, which is amazing. It went from 15% to about 20 to 25% now, which is great. We love to see more women roasting. And then Q Graders, it's kind of living around the same area of 20 to 25%. Green coffee buying, there wasn't a lot of information about that, but what I can tell you is from origin trips that I've been on or workshops that I've done at the SCA Expo, you're a woman in the room, like expect to be one of few when it comes to like conversations around financials and contracts and things of that nature. I was in a green coffee buying slash contracting workshop that I was particularly excited to go to because the sea market has been very vital, and that's how we buy coffee. It often depends on what the sea market is doing. And I'm really excited to go to this workshop. And I think there was like a hundred people in the room, and I was like one of five women. A very small percentage of us were women in a conversation that solely revolved around green coffee. And like my first origin trip, I brought two other women with me. There was one other female roaster that came with a different roasting company, but there was probably like 10 to 12 men that were in our group. And a lot of the producers that we visited outside of very specifically visiting uh Sophia, who's one of the producers for my company, it was all male producers that we were going to visit as well. Which for me, and I think this is why I didn't realize that women played such a huge fundamental role in the actual harvest of coffee, is that oftentimes when I see a coffee producer, I'm seeing a man. And I think that's because oftentimes it's the owner of a farm that's being photographed. Yeah, I think like marketing around showing women doing this hard, difficult job, but doing it incredibly well and being a part of the process, I think that's really important as well for us to understand that, like, yes, he might own this farm, but so many women are out there picking the coffee and making sure that the crop is coming in to utter perfection time and time again. So, what I'm excited about with this particular episode and also future episodes and diving more into gender in the coffee world and also just badass women doing amazing, incredible things, is I think that these conversations continue to open doors, even if it's in a subtle way, even if it's getting you to think about where your coffee comes from when you're sipping it in the morning and the fact that yeah, a woman probably was a part of that coffee getting to your cup. Like that's very, very possible. It's actually probably pretty rare that a woman wasn't involved in getting that coffee to your cup. Um, but also let's keep talking about giving women more room at the table when it comes to making large financial decisions and leadership positions and money-making decisions. Let's keep pulling up more and more chairs so that everyone's included in the conversation. And let's recognize the people that are in those chairs already that we might not be seeing. It's so interesting to me to really start diving into what's going on in origin countries, what's going on in consuming countries as well, where we might be falling short, what we might not even be recognizing. I mean, I'm in this industry, and obviously you know that I really care about women in coffee. But this wasn't even on the forefront for me, which is wild. The amount of information that we consume in this industry and still didn't hear it, didn't see it, had to seek it out. And granted, it was not hard to seek out, and partly that's on me, but mostly that's on me. But I think it's just let's be curious, let's start asking the right questions, let's continue to share information, and let's keep talking about women in coffee. So, just a little foundational episode from me to you, and I'm curious, like what other statistics do you have in the coffee world? I know that this is just like three, but what other things are getting you excited or are you curious about in the coffee world? It touches so many things that there's a lot to unpack always. But this has got me thinking about coffee differently, and I'm so grateful for that. And now I'm really curious what has got you thinking about coffee differently, or what your questions are. We had this amazing conversation this morning at the Roasting Co. as well about tipping and tipping in America, and man, I like we'll have to talk about that soon too, because I think that's a conversation that everyone seems to be buzzing about lately as well. Lots of good things to come. Yeah, give me your thoughts. Let me know what you're thinking about and what's top of mind for you. Probably talk about this so much more. And before I let you go, I have some very exciting news. I hinted at this on the tiny sidecar Instagram, but a couple episodes ago in the July news, I mentioned the Women Powered Coffee Summit, and it's an amazing opportunity. It's down in Mexico, early October. I think it starts on the first or second, and it's a three-day experience with lots of women producers and women professionals, but other amazing people in the coffee industry as well, lots of speakers, great opportunities. You're able to visit a farm and other like fun ways to get to know other people in the industry. Well, in that episode, I was like, I'm hoping that I'm going to get to be there and go. And I'm so excited to tell you that I am going. And not only am I going, but I'm bringing tiny sidecar with me. And so if you're going or thinking about going, first of all, I would love to meet you. I would love to chat. But second of all, you have the opportunity if you want to to do a little segment on tiny sidecar over that weekend, which I think is going to be so cool when we can bring everything together. And it already is such a special weekend. So being able to share it with y'all if you're not able to go is just so special. So a lot of really exciting good things to come. I know a couple of you already are going, and I'm again so excited to meet you. So I think that's gonna be all for right now. I can't wait for what is coming up next. And like I said, always feel free to shoot me a message on Instagram or send me an email at howdy at tiny sidecar.com. And I couldn't be happier to be with you for another great episode. Three months in. Can you believe it? Just wild. Anywho, have the most fabulous weekend, week, all of the above, month, end of summer, end of August, and I'll see you here really, really soon. All my love. Chat soon. Bye.