This Woman's Work

In many coffee-producing regions, women do the bulk of the work without receiving the rewards – but now pioneers in the industry are changing things, as Mersa Auda reports

- Mersa Auda

Quality is the watchword for speciality coffee. It’s the key variable that informs most decisions and guides most enterprises in the industry. But when quality is delivered, who is considered responsible for its attainment?

It would not be wrong to assign credit to the roaster, whose expertise and judgement dictate the flavours that emerge from the beans, while the barista’s touch – the last link in a long chain – can also have a major impact on how the coffee turns out. But what is often overlooked by coffee drinkers, and sometimes even by coffee professionals, is the extent to which quality is determined at origin. Those who handle coffee during the final stages of its journey are finessing a product with an established identity, an already-formed profile.

Speciality coffee in Western countries is a high-end product catering to sophisticated tastes, with an industry that seeks innovation and ever higher standards. In coffee-producing countries, however, the reality is completely different. In most cases, producers work to provide for their families’ dayto-day basic needs. The Fairtrade Foundation estimates that 25 million smallholder farmers are behind 80% of the world’s coffee production, and much of the labour performed on these farms – both agricultural and managerial – is carried out by women. In essence, those controlling the quality-determining factors in the early stages of the coffee supply chain are female.

All things being equal