Non-stop Coffee Dream. International Women Day Series: The Gender Rate in Coffee Industry (Australia & Taiwan)

I feel like it has been over a hundred years not coming to this blog. Somehow I was updating my other blog and realized a post about International Women Day would be a choice for here. Out of many reasons, I made this post since this was only my own observation, not really scientific research. And it would be a memoir for Australia. It has almost been a year.

Well. Happy International Women Day! Though it was the 13th already, I was trying to finish this before the end of the week so as to feeling a part of the celebration.

In Australia, as many of my followers or friends may know, I had worked for Stitch Coffee and Collective Roasting Solutions, which has rebranded into ECRE today. To put it simply, they are a roastery and academy individually, two of the sections in the coffee industry.

Coffee Women in Australia

As observed, a roastery is where the least women work for. If I have to approximate the ratio, it would be around 3 out of 10. I infer this may result from the heavy labor work, which takes a lot of strength physically. Though the roastery I had worked for had equipped complete infrastructures, many of them are automated, I still had to move or carry a lot of stuff, such as bags of green coffee, buckets full of freshly roasted coffee, and the coffee parcels for clients. There is always some work that couldn't be replaced totally. And biologically, most of the women could not afford the workload without proper physical training.

During the stay in Sydney, I also got a chance to attend events hosted by green coffee importers. The rate of women to men was a little bit higher, about 4 to 6. I couldn't explain it because I expected higher. While the cafes, it's quite equal. Some of them even had more women staff than men. And it's very often for me to visit some women-owned shops. 

I once had an opportunity to be a member of IWCA, The International Women's Coffee Alliance, but lost the connection. Felt ashamed about it. But anyway, back to Taiwan now.

Coffee Women in Taiwan

Based on the reason above, roasteries have the least women still. The ratio is similar to Australia. However, the importers and cafes own a very high women rate. I estimated it may be 6 to 4 or higher.

Overall, I think the ratio of coffee women in Taiwan is higher than the rate in Australia. But I know this issue shall be researched in a better way to accessing to the accurate data and statistics, and analyzed the background of society so that we can know the exact meaning behind it.

Anyway, women could be empowered and do whatever we want. We only have to believe in ourselves and make our efforts to our goals. Good luck girls! Happy International Women Day!