Step Aside, Gents. Witness The Rise Of Women In Coffee

Three women in coffee leading the way: Stephanie Backus of Portland Roasting, coffee farmer Miguelina Villatoro of Guatemala, and coffee exporter/processor Loyreth Sosa. Here they discuss coffee prices as they survey beans ready for milling.

The inspiration for NPR's Coffee Week arrived in an email last summer. I had just reported on the growing Third-Wave Movement in Coffee, and the burgeoning interest in coffee cuppings.

One listener, Margaret Swallow, who'd heard the story on her local station, WVXU in Cincinnati, reached out to me with the story of 30-plus years in coffee — which culminated in the founding of the International Women's Coffee Alliance, a group with chapters from Kenya to Costa Rica.

Margaret Swallow co-founded the International Women's Coffee Alliance a decade ago.

Its mission is to help bolster women in coffee-producing countries — in part, by helping them find ways to start their own businesses and bring more resources back to their communities. Stories like that of these four female coffee growers in Africa, whom we profiled last November, represent the vanguard of change and hope in the industry.

Swallow began her career in 1979. Back then, she was marketing the coffee that lots of us grew up with. Fresh out of Harvard Business School, she was hired by Proctor & Gamble as a brand assistant on Folgers Coffee.

If you listen to my story, you'll hear how she had an aha moment when she traveled to a coffee farm in Africa. The images she encountered of women and children working long hours in poor conditions, amid crushing poverty, stayed with her. She knew she wanted to make a difference.