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Anderson Porta
M. Szetela
English 1010
28 September 2014
Women Are the Solution
In the article Agriculture Needs More Women written by Sonia Faruqi for the
magazine The Atlantic and it was published on September 25, 2013. Faruqi believes that if more
women get involve with animal farming, animals would live in better conditions and treated
well. Also Faruqi presents many studies about how men and women are very different
psychologically and how these differences are affecting animal farming. She tells us anecdotes
and involvements during her investigations where she talked with many farmers. Faruqi also
explains different options of how we can increase the number of women in agriculture. Faruqi
makes appeals to ethos, logos and pathos in order to convince everybody that women are
better than men when it comes to animal farming.
In general, factory farms are hiring more men than women because men are stronger
and they can perform physical activities better than women. However, owners of factory farms
dont realize that by hiring more men than women they are creating a problem in the United
States which is animal cruelty. Most of the men that work in factory farms view animals as
edible commodities then animate creatures. For men animals are nameless, anonymous
masses, carefully hidden from public sight in windowless warehouses. Animal lives are

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miserable. The good thing is that there is a solution to this problem. Women are the solution.
The greatest difference between men and women is sensitivity. So this means women are more
likely to treat animals better than men when it comes to animal farming.
Faruqi uses appeals to ethos in order to have more credibility and let her main audience
know that she has knowledge about the topic she is writing. There are different examples of
this throughout the article. Faruqi says that she investigated animal farms in eight countries:
Canada, The United States, Mexico, Belize, Indonesia, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates
(para.3). This shows the readers that faruqi knows the problems with animal farming that these
countries are having. She focuses on the main problem that the United States is having with
animal farming which is that men dont treat animals with respect and love. Faruqi also tells
that she had long, heartfelt conversations with farm workers, owners, and corporate
executives and that the great majority of them, especially those who worked full-time, were
men (para. 4). By saying this Faruqi let the readers know that she is right that more men are
involved with animal farming and that this is the main problem that the United States is having.
Another appeal to ethos is that at the end of the article Faruqi tells that she is the author of a
forthcoming book about her international investigations of animal agriculture (para. 35). This
technique makes the reader think how serious she is about animal farming.
Also Faruqi uses appeals to pathos to convince the readers that women are more
sensitive and empathic than men when it comes to animal farming. Faruqi describes three
anecdotes she had when she visited different factory farms around the world. In the first
anecdote Faruqi describes what she saw in a factory farm I saw egg-laying hens crammed into

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microwave-size wire cages stacked up to the ceiling. I saw pregnant sows confined to irongalvanized steel crates. I saw chickens and turkeys that had gone lame because their bodies
were too big for their legs to support (para. 1). The second anecdote happened in Mexico and
it is about how a senior executive was wringing a chickens neck while he was giving Faruqi a
tour of his corporations factory farms (para. 19). The third anecdote is about a dairy farmer
who told Faruqi Animals convert what we feed them into products we can use. They digest
food we cant to make something for us. Thats all theyre here for. We can never think of them
in human terms (para. 16). Faruqi tells us these three anecdotes so the readers can be touched
emotionally and think that men dont treat animals with affection and also that women
wouldnt do what the Mexican senior executive did.
Faruqi also uses appeals to logos for three main reasons. The first reason is to convince
the audience that in the United States there are more men involved with animal farming. Faruqi
tells us about a study that explained only one out of every six full-time farmers, ranchers, and
other agricultural managers in the U.S. is a woman, according to 2011 data from the Bureau of
Labor Statistics (qtd in Faruqi para. 5). The second reason is to let the readers know how men
and women are very different psychologically. In order to support her second reason she shows
us different studies. One study is that men and women differ in their capacity for compassion,
defined as a moral emotion related to the perception of suffering in others, and resulting in a
motivation to alleviate the afflicted party (qtd in Faruqi para. 8). Another study Faruqi shows
us is that American found that 80 percent believe women to be more compassionate than
men. In addition, Americans rank women as more honest, emotional, intelligent, and creative
than men, while being equally hard-working and ambitious (qtd in Faruqi, para. 10). As we can

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see the purpose of these studies is to let the readers know that women are more sensitive than
men so this means that women would treat animals better than men and that is why
agriculture needs more women. The third reason is to show us logically two options of how we
would start to make more women involved with animal farming. The first option explains that
for increasing the ranks of women in agriculture would be to start at the student level. As a
university student, I often attended lectures organized by Women in Business, a student group
on my campus providing career advice and mentoring opportunities. Agricultural schools could
benefit from similar womens student groups (Faruqi para. 32). As we can see Faruqi used a
good technique to show us how to start making women more interested on animal farming.
This technique that she implies is known as baby steps. Women could start attending lectures
so they can start forming student groups to talk about it. The second option Faruqi give us is
that dedicated company recruitment efforts could also help. In order to explain this second
option she shows us a study that says just less than 20 percent of agribusinesses have
programs to recruit women (para. 32). This study that Faruqi gives us says that most of the
factory farms in the United States prefer men over women. Faruqi also shows us this study to
convince everybody that our country doesnt care about how animals are being treated in
factory farms.
Agriculture needs more women could be a solution to animal cruelty. Sonia Faruqi
shows in her article that men are not treating animals well and that women would do it better.
She wants more women to get involved with animal farming so animals would live in better
conditions and be treated well. Faruqi is very effective because she shows many studies and

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anecdotes that help her prove her point. By using logos, ethos, and pathos, the author tried to
convince everyone that agriculture needs more women.

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Work Cited
Faruqi, Sonia. Agriculture Needs More Women. The Atlantic. The Atlantic. 25 Sept. 2013. Web.
13 Sept. 2014.