Women in Agriculture meeting

From ABC News Online:

A weekend conference will focus on how Tasmanian farmers have reversed their fortunes after the prolonged drought.

More than 100 delegates will attend the Tasmanian Women in Agriculture conference in Hobart, with the theme, 'Opportunity Through Diversity'.

The conference provides networkingopportunities and also acts as a focus point for lobbying government.

Spokeswoman Belinda Hazell says on Saturday delegates will be taken on a tour of the Derwent Valley and the southern Midlands, which are slowly recovering from the drought.

Exhibition: The Land Girls

From Culture 24:

Wartime history plays host to a wealth of untold tales and forgotten histories. The case of the Land Girls is one such story, whose efforts were overshadowed by tales of military heroism in post-World War II Britain.

An exhibition at Brighton Museum documents the work, uniforms and accounts of the Women’s Land Army (WLA) in a new show, The Land Girls: Cinderellas of the Soil.

Land Girls worked in agriculture, farming and forestry in the UK during WWI and II, taking the place of 250,000 men who had been called to fight. The exhibition is laid out over three rooms and is illustrated with a plethora of photographs, diary accounts, propaganda posters, manuals, paintings, dolls and uniforms.

What makes the show unique is that it has been hosted while many of its subjects are still alive, so the viewer is interacting with living history. Throughout we see photographs of the women now and then together with video accounts of their experiences.

The first gallery tells of how the women were drafted across the country, first in WWI with 23,000 recruits and later in WWII, when the organisation had 200,000 members.

There are posters showing enlistment campaigns and photographs of volunteers at work in the fields and despite the media’s representation of the work it was far from glamorous.

Exhibition: The Land Girls, Brighton Museum, Brighton, until March 14 2010

Dr Patricia Hamilton

From Yorke Peninsula Country Times:

Dr Patricia Hamilton from Port Victoria is one of 100 outstanding women selected for inclusion on the 2009 South Australian Women’s Honour Roll.

Image The Honour Roll acknowledges and celebrates passionate and committed women who have made a positive contribution to the community.

Patricia is an advocate and mentor for rural women across the country and currently is President of National Australian Women in Agriculture (AWiA)—a non-government, not-for profit, incorporated organisation founded in 1993 to raise and unite the profile of rural women who contribute and participate constructively to the sustainability of agriculture.

Patricia is also a mentor for the Office for Youth Ignite Program.

She is the only Yorke Peninsula representative ever to be placed on the SA Honour Roll (which began in 2008) and in 2009 was one of only 13 rural women to receive such recognition.

Ireland: Women & Farming - A Response

I received a heart-wrenching email in response to the article "Ireland: Women & Farming" in which one reader wrote of her actual experience.

Her name is Portia, and I would like to summarise some of the information she revealed:

• women are ordered by their husbands to remain home
• many men object to their wives being employed in jobs that take them away from the farm - especially the work on the farm
  
• some men have their wives committed to facilities in order to maintain their control of the family and property
• many women stand to lose more when the marriage ends, and are often left homeless when the marriage disintergrates, their children often being disinherited
  

This woman overcame adversity and become empowered, retaking her life back into her own hands. I wish her nothing but the best - she is truly a notable woman.


Note: Please visit - Portia's Story

Tea Party for Lumber Jills

From Mail Online

They were part of the Women's Land Army that kept Britain in business while their menfolk were away at war. But few are likely to have heard of the Lumber Jills and their vital contribution to the country's war effort.

The Women's Timber Corps (WTC), which was set up in the First World War but not formalised in 1942 by the Ministry of Supply (Home Grown Timber Department), worked in the forests to provide wood for the war effort, felling trees, sawing logs and sharpening saws.

It was gruelling, backbreaking work - often carried out in harsh conditions - but 6,000 young women, some only in their mid teens, tackled it without a peep of protest.

Girls were officially recruited from the age of 17 - although some who joined were as young as 14 - and came from all kinds of backgrounds and all walks of life.

Those who needed training were sent to and billeted at training camps such as Shandford Lodge, near Brechin, and then posted to wherever they were needed. -
predominantly in Scotland.

Yet despite their remarkable contribution there was no official recognition of the WTC's efforts during the war - in fact many refer to them as the ‘Forgotten Corps'.

Ireland: Women & Farming

From the Irish Times:

WOMEN ARE no longer prepared to be “invisible” in Irish farming, Maireád Lavery, the head of the Agri-Aware organisation, said yesterday.

She was speaking to about 600 attending the Women in Agriculture conference in Athlone, which discussed both the role played by women on farms and areas of concern, including property rights, inheritance and divorce in relation to farmland.

Although women carried out up to 25 per cent of work on farms, there were few registered female farm owners, and representation in the farm organisations was very low and did not reflect the realities, Ms Lavery said.

Dr Maureen Gaffney, psychologist and writer, said Fortune 500 research on top US companies had shown when women were involved in senior management, companies performed much better than where there was little or no female involvement.

This research, she said, pointed the way for Irish agriculture, where women’s involvement at the highest levels would generate more profitability and better all-round structures. There was a clear opportunity now for more involvement by women.

Florida: Women & Farming

From Miami Herald:

Women have always participated in farm life, but historically in the background as wives and daughters. Now they're taking charge.

About 460 Miami-Dade farms, or nearly 20 percent, are run by women -- a share that is inching up even as agricultural acreage dwindles. In Broward, the figure is 157 farms, or nearly 30 percent.

Consider these numbers from the U.S. Census of Agriculture: In 2002, 11 percent of the nation's 2.1 million principal farm operators were women; five years later, the figure had risen to 14 percent. In 2007, 22 percent of Florida's farms were run by women, a 28 percent increase in five years.

``It's been a slow, steady evolution, much of it due to the nursery industry,'' says Debbie Brady, president of Florida Agri-Women, founded in 2003.