Summary

Black and white photograph depicting participants attending a fencing workshop at the 1994 Glenormiston Women on Farms Gathering. This workshop offered hands-on experience in the paddock, including experience with wire knots, electric fencing, emergency fence repairs and straining wires. A comment in the 1994 Glenormiston Proceedings stated, 'Glenormiston fences have been cut and rejoined by eager women learning and sharing skills and muscle power. Electric fencing was tackled too, with problem solving and ways to test if the fence is working, a specialty.'
Part of Museums Victoria's Invisible Farmer Project Collection. The Invisible Farmer Project was the largest ever study of Australian women on the land, uncovering the histories and stories of Australian women in agriculture. It began as a pilot project (2015-2016) and evolved into a three year (2017-2020) nation-wide partnership between rural communities, academic, government and cultural organisations, funded by the Australian Research Council.the absence of rural women in mainstream histories and museums.

Description of Content

A woman standing by a fence receiving a lesson on fencing during a workshop at the 1994 Glenormiston Gathering.

Physical Description

Colour Digital Photograph

Significance

Workshops have been a regular feature of all Victorian Women on Farms Gatherings ever since the first Gathering in Warragul in 1990. At the inaugural 1990 Gathering, workshops were inspired by the farm skills courses that had been running around Victoria during the late 1980s and that had been the forerunner to the first Gathering. These workshops were very hands-on and focused predominately on enhancing the practical farm skills of the women that participated. However, as the Gatherings themselves evolved to include a range of broader rurally based activities and issues, workshops too became more diverse and began to include a range of non-farming educational opportunities. Whatever their focus, all workshops have aimed to educate, inspire, up skill and rejuvenate the women that partake. Situated in the wider context of the rural women's movement in Australia, these workshops represent a collective move by rural women to educate themselves about farming enterprise, raise their public profile and in doing so, to challenge the dominant representation of rural Australia as a male domain.

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