It’s been 30 years since the census recognised women as farmers, but there’s still ‘a long way to go’

As recently as 30 years ago, many women in agriculture still avoided the “F” word.

They hesitated to call themselves farmers.

Victoria’s 1891 census committee counted livestock, but not women farmers.

And the practice of overlooking agricultural women on everything from farm business paperwork to official registers continued across the country.

But after 100 years of feeling invisible, Australia’s rural women had had enough.

And by the 1990s, regional networks of women in agriculture had grown into a national movement, demanding their work in the industry be acknowledged — and to be recognised as farmers in their own right.

History in the making

With the 1994 census on its way, people like Alana Johnson wanted women to break with convention and list their occupation as “farmer”.

“Women’s work on farms was not counted because we weren’t considered farmers,” said Ms Johnson, a fifth-generation farmer from Victoria’s north east.

On farm documents, women were referred to as “non-productive” silent partners, according to fellow rebel Anna Lottkowitz, who was the Victorian agriculture department’s first female beef officer.

By the 1990s, while there were no longer explicit policies preventing it, a lifetime of being overlooked meant women in agriculture still shied away from describing themselves as farmers.

“In 1994 women stepped forward and decided to nominate themselves as farmers [and the census was changed]” Ms Johnson said.

“It meant actually going public, standing up to the invisibility and saying, ‘We are farmers, we contribute, we work, and we’re going to claim this space.'”

That year saw the creation of Australian Women in Agriculture (AWiA), which became the country’s peak body for female farmers.

The same year, Ms Lottkowitz helped organise the first conference of agricultural women, who came from across the world to meet in Melbourne.

“The energy at the place was mind-bending,” she said.

“There was a huge amount of fun and a lot of skills development.

“And there were very strong threads around the need for political change and raising women’s voices … within the agricultural industry and government.”

Feminism comes to the bush

While the second wave of feminism moved through urban areas from the 1960s, little changed in country Australia.

“Those sort of revolutionary feminist acts didn’t get to the bush for a long time,” said Ms Johnson, a founding member of AWiA and current chair of the Victorian Women’s Trust.

“Women found it really difficult to be ‘radical’ when they were in a farming family, because the most important thing to them was supporting their families.

“Disruption was not something that came easily.”

But as rural women studied at city universities in the 1970s and 1980s, they returned to the farm with new ideas.

The rural women’s movement of the 1990s brought huge change to the lives of farming women and communities.

“We’ve seen and fostered the next generation of leaders,” Ms Lottkowitz said.

“The thread which happened through that period and into the 2000s included the growth of femocrats within bureaucracies, and those women were critical in helping to shift some of the policy agendas.”

Next generation of farming women

Amy Cosby is part of the new generation of women in agriculture.

She runs a dairy farm with husband Rowdy and has three boys under five.

Dr Cosby is also an associate professor of agri-tech education at Central Queensland University, where she leads an all-female team of researchers.

Major changes in technology mean women’s roles in farming have changed dramatically in just a few years, Dr Cosby said.

“Some of those jobs that have been really manual labour … [now] they’re really beginning to utilise technology and data to make decisions, and I think women are perfectly suited for that role,” she said.

“I’m really proud to be a female farmer and to work in agriculture, I think it’s the best industry and a fantastic job.

“We are starting to become more visible in agriculture, which is really important to [getting] that next generation of young women involved in agriculture as female farmers — they can’t be what they can’t see.”

Work still to be done

This week, the AWiA will meet to celebrate 30 years since the organisation was formed to demand recognition for women and a role in agricultural politics.

However, this year’s conference of women in agriculture will also firmly focus on areas that still need to be changed.

“If you look at the number of women on boards and committees, there’s still a very long way to go on that,” Ms Lottkowitz said.

“Some of the women who are most engaged and involved in their industry are also ending up juggling kids or older parents, they may be subject to domestic violence — a whole lot of the underlying social issues across rural communities.

“There are supports in place for some of that, but there’s a lot of it that’s still got a long way to go.”