Women managed 17.2% of the European Union’s utilised agricultural area in 2023.
Utilised agricultural area is the land used for farming, such as arable land, permanent crops and grassland, Eurostat reported on Thursday.
The share varied widely across the EU’s regions, with data available for 241 so-called NUTS 2 areas — a standard EU regional breakdown used for statistics.
More than half of those regions, 134, reported a share of agricultural land managed by women below the EU average, representing 55.6% of regions with data.
The Dutch region of Friesland recorded the lowest share at 2.7%, with around 6,000 hectares managed by female farm managers.
The highest share was in Oberösterreich in northern Austria, where women managed 42.5% of utilised agricultural area — around 211,600 hectares.
Where female farm management was most common
A total of 25 regions had at least 28.5% of utilised agricultural area managed by women, Eurostat said.
These higher shares were concentrated in Italy, with 11 regions, Greece and Austria with four each, and Spain with three.
At the other end of the scale, 12 regions recorded female management of less than 5% of utilised agricultural area, including 10 of the Netherlands’ 12 regions as well as Åland in Finland at 3.6% and Syddanmark in Denmark at 4.9%.
The United Nations has declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer, Eurostat noted.
