All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
Women’s labour has long been central to the success of Australian farming. But farming itself is still largely seen as a “masculine” job. That’s why the Australian women in agriculture movement has fought hard to change this perception.
Our research has reviewed the story and impacts of this movement over the past 40 years.
There have been some big wins for women – particularly in terms of cultural recognition. But they still do not have equal access to the economic rewards of farming.
In the 1990s, rural women started meeting and formulating agendas for change at what were known as the “Women on Farm Gatherings”.
In 1994, the movement was successful in challenging the existing legal status of women on farms as a “sleeping partner, non-productive”.
This impacted women’s position in divorce and injury settlements, impinging on their claims that they were contributors to the farm business and deserved recognition as such.
The movement was making gains in disrupting the masculine idea of what it was to be a farmer. But it also faced backlash.
Like many Australian women’s movements, the momentum of the rural women’s movement stalled from the late 1990s onward.
Farmers were encouraged to “get big or get out” to maintain farm viability. They were also encouraged to become more professional and entrepreneurial.
Policies targeted at women in agriculture and women in rural areas focused on tapping into rural women’s potential to make farms professional and less reliant on government support.
This included building skills related to the farm office. These programs helped to legitimise the policy of economic restructuring, as it was seen to be empowering for women.
These programs did little to improve women’s access to the economic rewards of agriculture. Key politicians still appeared to see women as secondary farmers.
For example, in 2013, then federal agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce said agriculture would “fall flat on its face without the prominent and incredible role that women play”, but then described that role as “basically as the assistant farm labourer, with the partner or with the husband”.
Women’s on and off-farm labour is crucial for family farm viability in Australia, but they still do not share equally in the economic rewards of farming.
The flexibility and underpayment of family labour is arguably one of the key reasons Australian farming remains largely in family rather than corporate hands.
This does not recognise women as independent farmers in their own right. It also reinforces and normalises women’s contribution to agriculture and rural communities as underpaid or unpaid.
Source: Women have fought hard to be recognised as farmers. There’s still more work to be done
In the 1970s census the number of farmers rose exponentially. This was a consequence of activism by women advocating identification of women as real workers. Carmel Niland, then head of the Women’s Unit set up by the Wran government as administrative support for the NSW Women’s Advisory Council his government created, reported on this phenomenon – the increase in farmer numbers was directly due to women identifying as farmers. Women on farms milked cows, collected the eggs, fed the shearers – a huge job, as shearer teams were high in numbers and had huge appetites, and trained and kept sheep dogs well on the job, many drove tractors and harvesters and ‘bogged in’ alongside their husbands and sons, so wives and daughters were right in identifying themselves as farmers – where many in the past had not seen their work as work – equal to that of their farming husbands and sons and brothers.
I recall well participating in Women on/and Farms Gatherings in Victoria and NSW – lots and lots of women, speaking on the value of women’s work/contribution to farming and the division of farms upon divorce and widowhood. Dynamic days indeed.