When the carpark reaches capacity
Western Southland dairy farmer Kaylene Bennett has turned her own experience of reaching capacity into Kellogg research examining the mental load carried by rural women and the impact it is having on their wellbeing, careers and communities.
For Kaylene Bennett, the realisation that she could no longer keep going as she was came while sitting in a doctor’s waiting room.
The dairy farmer, accountant and mother of five had reached what she now describes as capacity.
“I’m the kind of person that gives 110 percent to everything I do, and I just felt absolutely lost,” Bennett said.
“I couldn’t focus on things. It was, ‘I’ll get that done soon’, or ‘I’ll do that tomorrow’, but those times just weren’t coming.”
At the time, Bennett and her family were in the middle of calving at Beach Valley Dairies, near Tuatapere.
Her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer, one daughter had broken her arm and needed surgery, while another had suffered complications following surgery on her leg.
There were repeated trips to Invercargill, the added pressure of dealing with ACC, and Bennett’s husband was away working for part of that period.
“It was a perfect storm,” she said.
The experience helped prompt Bennett’s Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme research into the mental load carried by rural women.
Her report, Is the “carpark” too full? Is the mental load of rural women affecting their everyday lives and how can we support it?, examines the often unseen responsibility involved in managing farms, families, work and community commitments.
Bennett said there was an important distinction between being busy and carrying an excessive mental load.
“I actually quite enjoy being busy. It’s productive and it’s sometimes goal-focused. It’s going from one thing to the next, achieving things and being involved in things,” she said.
“But when it becomes an overwhelming mental load, it’s a foggy brain and an inability to focus.”
The load could include everything from meals and appointments to children, farm commitments and keeping track of what needed to happen next.
It could also include carrying responsibility for the emotional wellbeing of others.
“You’re considering the emotions of everyone else around you before you even load them up with more,” Bennett said.
Her research drew 196 completed survey responses, as well as 15 interviews with women in rural sector leadership roles.
Of those who responded to the survey, 81 percent did not identify themselves as healthy on the Mental Health Continuum.
Bennett said the finding left her saddened.
“I think I was more sad about the fact that we’ve created a society that thinks this is okay.”
Another finding showed only 5 percent of respondents placed themselves at the top of their priority list, while 61 percent put themselves in the bottom half.
“It’s kind of like trying to run a car on empty.” Bennett said.
Nearly three-quarters said they often or always had too many tasks to manage at once.
For Bennett, that reinforced one of the biggest lessons from her own experience.
She now has a reminder written on the wall at home.
“The reason I’m not coping is because I’m at capacity.”
“It’s not around capability. It’s capacity.”
In rural communities, she said, women could easily find themselves taking on additional responsibilities simply because without someone stepping forward, opportunities might disappear.
“If I want my children to learn to swim, then I’ll become a coach at swimming club, or I’ll coach their netball team.
“If you want the children to have opportunities, sometimes you find yourself tied up in creating those opportunities.”
Community and family commitments did not remove the work waiting elsewhere.
Bennett’s research found women often compensated by starting earlier or working later.
“Women would typically start really early in the morning or keep going late at night just to try and organise the chaos,” she said.
One of the most significant findings was that 60 percent of respondents had left paid employment or a career to focus on their family or farm.
For some, farming was exactly where they wanted to be.
For others, geography, limited childcare and the difficulty of finding care flexible enough to fit farming hours restricted their choices.
One theme emerged strongly.
“I had a career, I got married, I went farming, we had kids, and somewhere along the way I lost who I was.”
Bennett said women often put the needs of others ahead of their own, sometimes at the expense of their identity and career.
She said women needed to feel able to set boundaries and say no, but addressing mental load could not rest solely with the women carrying it.
A key issue was the difference between sharing tasks and sharing responsibility.
A partner might willingly do something once asked, but Bennett said the work of recognising what needed doing had already taken place.
“That thought process has already happened,” she said.
“So that’s already come through your carpark.”
Bennett also wants the agricultural sector to recognise mental load as more than a personal wellbeing issue.
While it can be difficult to measure, she said there were clear implications for farm businesses.
“It’s very much affecting people’s wellbeing and absolutely their productivity, which would have a flow-on effect to profitability because people are not 100 percent working on their game if they’ve got 10 million things going on in their mind.”
Nearly two years on from reaching her own capacity, Bennett said she was still working on finding the balance herself.
Women should not interpret reaching capacity as a personal failure, she said.
But she believes change needs to come from both industry and within rural communities.
“I think it comes from industry level, but it also comes from creating spaces for our grassroots women to go, ‘It’s okay, I’m doing a great job and I don’t have to do all of that.’”
Comments