Recognition but few rewards: a 40-year review of the impact of the Australian women in agriculture movement

Despite women’s contribution to the viability of Australian family farming, there is gendered inequality in access to cultural recognition and economic rewards. This article examines the extent to which the Australian rural women’s movement challenged the state to respond to this inequality. It focuses on the period 1983–2024 and finds evidence of effective claim-making by the rural women’s movement for cultural recognition as partners in the farm business. It does not find evidence of claims for greater access to economic rewards. Effective claim-making depended upon supporting the broader economic policy of agricultural restructuring and supporting the viability of the family farm. This limited the movement’s ability to make claims for economic rewards as doing so would necessitate a challenge to the gendered power relations of Australian agriculture. This study offers a rural perspective to the broader body of literature on the efficacy of women’s movements in neoliberal states.