Summary

Black and white digital photograph depicting a woman participating in a welding workshop at the 1994 Glenormiston Women on Farms Gathering.
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.

Description of Content

Women wearing denim shorts, flannel shirt, heavy boots, long leather apron and goggles holding a welding torch over a tall metal tray.

Physical Description

Black and White 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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