How can women be successfully integrated into agricultural teams?

Methods

Summary

The investigation will take the form of a quantitative field experiment. Team processes and performance will be compared in 2 types of vineyard teams (all-male vs. mixed gender). Team processes are the interactions between members such as the amount of conflict, communication, and trust. Performance will be assessed on two typical vineyard tasks (pruning; canopy management). We will also relate the results to the overall gender demography of the companies in which teams operate. If we recruit teams that vary enough from one another in gender make-up we will also factor the influence of proportional gender composition into the analysis.

The exact measures we decide upon will depend on an initial consultation we will hold with a panel of viticulture experts from the vineyard industry. In particular, we will develop a series of measures (ratings probably) to assess team performance in pruning and canopy management. We will then have the panel train us to collect these measures.

We will update this methods section as the project progresses.