Women Share Their Challenges in Producing and Selling Award-Winning Olive Oils

An increas­ing num­ber of female olive oil pro­duc­ers are rec­og­nized for their excep­tional extra vir­gin olive oil, with numer­ous women-owned brands awarded at the 2024 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

In the lat­est edi­tion of the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity con­test, nearly half of the judges were women, with nine female judges out of a panel of 19.

“Overall, women in the sec­tor are becom­ing more active and gain­ing more sup­port from gov­ern­ments and olive oil insti­tu­tions, such as the International Olive Council,” said Jill Myers, the founder of Women in Olive Oil.

“As a result, more women are win­ning awards and judg­ing com­pe­ti­tions, espe­cially in the more tra­di­tional coun­tries like Italy and Latin America,” she added.

Organizations such as Women in Olive Oil have observed an increas­ing num­ber of women com­ing together with a shared enthu­si­asm for olive oil. The orga­ni­za­tion works to help women net­work, col­lab­o­rate, edu­cate and sup­port one another.

According to indus­try experts, includ­ing Myers, women have long been exten­sively engaged in olive farm­ing and olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“Presently, they serve as farm­ers, tasters, pro­duc­ers, chefs, researchers, edu­ca­tors and spe­cial­ists in diverse areas directly or indi­rectly asso­ci­ated with the olive oil indus­try,” Myers said. ​“Their exper­tise and expe­ri­ence are instru­men­tal in advanc­ing this sig­nif­i­cant domain and exert­ing a sub­stan­tial influ­ence on present and forth­com­ing gen­er­a­tions.”

Along with cli­mate change and the macro­eco­nomic chal­lenges that all pro­duc­ers face, some award-win­ning women argued that cul­tural biases against female-owned com­pa­nies are an extra hur­dle to over­come.

“The chal­lenges that women, and in our case, ​‘for­eign’ women as olive oil pro­duc­ers, face are that our awards are down­played,” said Christiane Wassmann, the co-owner of Rastrello, which earned a Silver Award at the 2024 NYIOOC.

While cli­mate change remains the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for the Umbrian pro­ducer, Wassmann added that some women pro­duc­ers feel they are not taken seri­ously.

“Our biggest chal­lenges this year were def­i­nitely due to the cli­mate,” she said. ​“For about the sec­ond year run­ning, we had a very wet spring that led straight into an extremely hot sum­mer. Since we rely on nat­ural irri­ga­tion, our olives didn’t develop as we would have hoped.”

On the other side of the olive oil world in California, Beth McCown, the owner of Central Coast Olive Company, agrees that atti­tudes toward gen­der lag behind in the agri­cul­tural sec­tor com­pared to other parts of the econ­omy and soci­ety.

“I think farm­ing is one of the last areas in our econ­omy to over­come bias against women in the work­force, espe­cially in man­age­ment roles,” she said. ​“I spent many years in the aero­space indus­try and was able to observe good progress in the cor­po­rate world.”

“It’s def­i­nitely not per­fect, but much bet­ter than before,” McCown added. ​“Similar progress in farm man­age­ment is very slow to hap­pen. It is the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion that is just now break­ing the bar­ri­ers.”

Central Coast Olive Company earned their fifth straight Gold Award at the 2024 NYIOOC. McCown said her suc­cess is built on meet­ing the chal­lenges each year.

“Farming is not easy,” she said. ​“There are many vari­ables, such as weather, soil con­di­tions, pests and mar­ket pref­er­ences. It takes per­sis­tence and a love for what you are doing” to suc­ceed.

“In the years I have pro­duced extra vir­gin olive oil, I have estab­lished rela­tion­ships with my fel­low pro­duc­ers, miller and labor con­trac­tor. Those rela­tion­ships are the cor­ner­stone of my pro­duc­tion,” McCown added.

While these strong rela­tion­ships have helped McCown achieve con­sis­tent qual­ity, she occa­sion­ally comes up against ingrained biases.

“We are for­tu­nate to have a migrant labor force to help dur­ing har­vest and prun­ing,” she said. ​“Most of those crews are man­aged by men from cul­tures that typ­i­cally assume men are in charge. It presents chal­lenges, and I usu­ally need to ask my hus­band not to be present because his pres­ence under­mines my author­ity. I think it’s a shame.”

McCown believes more women will become olive oil pro­duc­ers despite these frus­trat­ing instances.

“I do believe that more women are becom­ing olive oil pro­duc­ers, and this trend will con­tinue in the future,” she said. ​“It’s a won­der­ful occu­pa­tion, and with each new woman pro­ducer enter­ing the field, bar­ri­ers are being bro­ken.”

McCown, a Women in OIive Oil mem­ber, said she finds the group help­ful in pro­vid­ing role mod­els.

“When peo­ple think of a farmer, they gen­er­ally assume the farmer is a man,” she said. ​“I have had many instances in social sit­u­a­tions with my hus­band in which ques­tions about grow­ing olives and pro­duc­ing olive oil are directed to my hus­band.”

“It is very frus­trat­ing to have to over­come those assump­tions and explain that I really am the farmer and pro­ducer,” McCown added. ​“Seeing other women doing what I am doing is great rein­force­ment to me.”

In Greece,​Nicky Giavroglou, the chief exec­u­tive of Hellenic Fine Oils, and Aimilia Rigakou, the company’s research and devel­op­ment man­ager, agree that women-led com­pa­nies still have to con­tend with agri­cul­ture being seen as a mas­cu­line pro­fes­sion.

“However, in Greece, it is also part of our tra­di­tion for women to col­lect olives, to make table olives, and in gen­eral to be part of many stages of the olive and olive oil pro­duc­tion process,” Giavroglou said.

“In the last few years, women have started to become more engaged in this sec­tor, either as sci­en­tists or pro­duc­ers,” she added. ​“In my opin­ion, they can play a very ben­e­fi­cial role in the devel­op­ment of the olive oil sec­tor, and they can claim as many awards as men.”

Hellenic Fine Oil earned a Gold Award for its Sparta Gourmet brand, a medium Koroneiki.

“This sea­son has been par­tic­u­larly chal­leng­ing com­pared to past years,” Giavroglou said. ​“On the one hand, we faced more dif­fi­cul­ties com­pared to other years in find­ing qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils with spe­cial organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics to be bot­tled under our brand name, Sparta Gold, which is exported to many coun­tries.”

“This is partly due to cli­mate change, which affects olive cul­ti­va­tion,” she added. ​“Olive pro­duc­ers and millers are not yet suf­fi­ciently trained to face such extreme con­di­tions, and this may also be a fac­tor that affects the final qual­ity of the raw mate­r­ial.”

“On the other hand, we also had to deal with this year’s severely reduced pro­duc­tion and the fact that a large quan­tity of Greek extra vir­gin olive oil is still exported in bulk,” Giavroglou con­tin­ued.

Rigakou attrib­uted the company’s suc­cess to her part­ner­ship with Giavroglou. Regardless of gen­der, she empathized with the need for a team of peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate about what they are doing, detail-ori­ented, orga­nized and ready to make per­sonal sac­ri­fices for a com­mon goal.

“To all the above, I attribute the excel­lent coop­er­a­tion that led us, on the one hand, to the pro­duc­tion of spe­cial extra vir­gin olive oils and, of course, to win the Gold Award from the NYIOOC com­pe­ti­tion,” she con­cluded.