Horsham businesswoman Bronwen Clark speaks at the National Rural Women's Conference in Canberra. Picture: CONTRIBUTED
Wimmera women have taken the region's issues to the rest of the country as part of the 2013 National Rural Women's Conference in Canberra.
The conference last week connected rural and regional women and had guest speakers including chef Maggie Beer, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick and fashion designer Liz Davenport.
Donald woman Rose Harris took part in the conference's Rural Women's Summit, which helps to guide Federal Government policy in regional areas.
"The idea of it was that they had 52 women representing all the rural and regional areas of the country," she said.
"We worked on developing some recommendations to take to the Federal Government around the issues we face as a rural women. We had to refine the recommendations into something that the Federal Government could change into a policy or funding initiative."
Mrs Harris said she raised the issue of a lack of childcare in regional and rural areas.
"I put it on the table once but it ended up coming out as one of the top five or six issues overall," she said.
Horsham businesswoman Bronwen Clark spoke of the networking power of the Country Women's Association while at the conference.
"After I finished my speech I had a queue of women lining up to talk to me to see how they could start up a branch for younger women. "
Fellow Horsham woman Andrea Cross travelled to the conference on a State Government scholarship.
"I have become very close with about seven of the other scholarship winners and we have started an electronic network to support each other and plan to catch up at least once a year," she said.
"The most powerful thing for me was a quote from Maggie Beer who said 'do you know where the food comes from that is on your plate?'.
"When we live in the agricultural area we need to consider how much money the farmers are getting for the wheat that makes the bread that ends up in our toasters."
