NSW Farmers are holding 12 Empowering Women in Farming Businesses events across the state, with Broken Hill’s meeting taking place on Wednesday, November 13.
The event aims to empower women in the sector through decision-making, business, and financial education, alongside networking.
“Women are estimated to provide one-third of on-farm income, often through the management of the farm business itself yet are often not specifically trained in these skills,” said NSW Farmers Projects Manager Georgia Campbell.
“We appreciate that women often do a lot of office work or back-end work without any formal training. So we’ve done things like financial, business-plan and social media training
“We’ve done talks on superannuation for women and making sure that they understand you know how to be financially viable in their own right, like making sure their signatories are on the farm books and the importance of using digital financial management systems as opposed to chequebooks.
“A lot of these women are coming into family situations where in-laws and parents might not want to let go, so these women are working in these businesses and have no input into them in a formal sense.
“So we really want to empower them to say ‘we need to modernise, we need to have a website’ and giving them the skills to then go and do it.”
Ms Campbell said that the sessions are also encouraging women to have a paid salary if working on a family farm.
“We’ve had women come to events and say, oh my God, I don’t even have my own bank account. And that’s obviously a bit bigger than what we can manage in a day, but it’s just opening their eyes,” Ms Campbell said.
The event is free, children are welcome, and is held within school hours to make the timing accessible for as many women as possible.
Some of the speakers for the event include Founder & CEO of Womn-Kind / 2024 Agrifutures Rural Women’s Award NSW finalist Ruby Riethmuller, Georgina Luckraft from the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association, and Art Therapist Naomi Wild from Creative heART Space.
