Can We Root Out Bias in the Produce Industry? A Woman CEO’s Take

“Hi, I’m Erin from the FruitGuys!” I say, reaching out to shake Melissa’s hand.

Melissa is a client, and I’m meeting her for the first time in the lobby of her office building, along with Nicole, our operations manager and longest-standing employee.

“Shouldn’t it be The FruitGirls?” Melissa asks with a smile.

I hear this a lot, especially when people outside of The FruitGuys meet our nearly all-women leadership team. That distribution wasn’t intentional—our business just evolved that way.

“We’re thinking about The FruitFolks,” I say, smiling back. That’s my usual response. Even though I’m proud of how many women are part of The FruitGuys, I want to be inclusive of everyone, however they identify.

A Short History of Women in Fruit

The fruit world has changed a lot since The FruitGuys started 28 years ago. Back then, there were very few women in produce, although some amazing ones, like Frieda Caplan and Margie Maheras (the mother of one of our coworkers), paved the way for the rest of us. Both of them ran businesses at a time when seeing a woman at the market was unheard of. Margie was the first and only woman at the San Francisco produce market in the 1950s.

Things have definitely progressed since then. There are more and more women in the produce industry, and we work with more female growers every year (like Eva Pfeffer, profiled below!). Women make up about 36% of US farmers and hold 23% of the leadership roles in agribusiness. But that growth doesn’t mean we’re free from the kind of bias that I believe limits everyone.

How Bias Shows Up Today

Women should be equals in the workplace, but we’re sometimes treated differently. This can be pretty subtle: A client might address the man in the room first, even if his female coworker is the expert, or assume that the man is the CEO when the woman actually outranks him.

The truth is that we all have unconscious biases—myself included! It can be automatic to make assumptions about people based on how they look and act. But it’s also damaging to assume, for example, that a man is “leadership material” just because he’s direct and confident; that women, especially mothers, are less ambitious than their male counterparts; or that only men are strong enough to work construction and only women are caring enough to be preschool teachers.

We all know people who don’t fit these stereotypes, and it’s unfair to keep using them as we think about how people show up at work. We can and should do better. But how?

Moving Forward with Open Minds

This Women’s History Month, I’m grateful for all of the courageous, trailblazing women who came before me. But I’m also reflecting on how I, as a female leader, can build a workplace where everyone can succeed regardless of gender, race, religion, socioeconomic status, age, or sexual identity. I’m asking questions like:

• What are we doing to make sure we’re truly equitable in our hiring, giving everyone a fair shot?
• How are we checking our unconscious biases and letting go of assumptions about how people should act?
• How can we help people find the right roles where they can succeed as their best selves, even if those roles are unexpected?

If you’re a leader at work, I hope you’ll reflect on these questions too. The workplace is changing, and we can use those changes to challenge our assumptions about what it should look like. Boundary pushers like Frieda and Margie have shown us that it only takes one person to start making a difference.