Catchment Keepers for Women in Hay
Catchment Keepers for Women in Hay
Empowering women farmers and farm partners by providing education, encouraging leadership, fostering connections and recognising contributions.
Capacity to Deliver -
NSWLP-011-
The issue
While the role of women in agriculture is steadily evolving, despite making up half the agricultural workforce in Australia, women are significantly underrepresented and continue to be undervalued in positions of rural leadership and decision making. An unconscious bias exists as a simple Google search for ‘Australian farmer’ delivers 80-90% of images with men only.
Women’s contribution to agriculture has a rich and very deep history. Yet the nature of women’s farm work is often rendered invisible because much of it can be intangible and ephemeral, is characterised by relationships and oral tradition, and dismissed as just domestic work when in fact this work is what has often sustained families, farms and communities.
The solution
Funded by the National Landcare Program ‘Smart Farms Small Grants’, Murrumbidgee Landcare developed a project to support women farmers and farm partners as custodians of the land and water, and in their life on farms and in their communities. The project engaged local women farmers and farm partners in a program of discussions, farm walks, academic insights with workshops focused on improving confidence, reducing social isolation, providing skills, empowering leadership and custodian roles, and building networks for ongoing cohesion.
The impact
Murrumbidgee Landcare Bidgee West hosted a series of five workshops in Hay from October 2021 to September 2022. These workshops were very well attended by a range of enthusiastic local women. There were numerous wonderful guest speakers who showcased their amazing work covering a wide variety of topics including tree health for habitat, revegetation and regeneration, environmental water, native pollinators, grazing management, mapping software packages, renewable energy, native garden design and maintenance, direct seeding and quad bike safety. Participants enjoyed the opportunity to gets hands-on with seed ball rolling, basket weaving, sip-n-paint and gentle yoga, and each created their own take-home dried native plant boutonniere, native plant etched prints and acrylic poured paint wooden serving board.
Key facts
- Our local catchment keepers walked away with new knowledge, confidence, and friendships.
- Feedback included: “Amazing diversity in presentations”, “Fantastic day, very well organised”, “I enjoyed talking and being with this group of women” and “Great day with great supportive and generous people sharing their experiences”.