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For further information contact:
Edwina Clowes, 
RIRDC Rural Women's Award National Coordinator. 
Phone:  07 5445 7282 
Mobile: 0417 727 544
clowesedwina@bigpond.com

© 2008  RIRDC

The Award, now in its eighth year is playing a pivotal role in the future sustainability of rural Australia, by encouraging rural women and their increased contribution to rural industries.

The 2008 Award provides a Bursary of $10,000 to each of the seven State and Territory winners and the opportunity for winners and runners up in each State and Territory, to attend the prestigious Australian Institute of Company Directors’ course.

The Award offers the opportunity for one of the seven State and Territory winners to be selected as the RIRDC Rural Women’s Award 2008 National Winner, to represent RIRDC and the Award.

The Award supports women with a strong and positive vision for the future of agriculture and is open to all women involved in agriculture, including fisheries and forestry, natural resource management and related service industries. 

Nominations are invited from across agriculture in each State and Territory and will be selected against the following Selection Criteria: 

• A demonstrated personal commitment to sustainable agriculture and to the role of rural women in your State or Territory.
• Potential to achieve and deliver benefits to agriculture
• Provide leadership and share skills and knowledge

The three major national sponsors of the 2008 Award are the Australian Women’s Weekly, ABC Radio and Rural Press. 

RIRDC’s ‘Missed Opportunities-Harnessing the Potential of Women in Australian Agriculture” provides the most recent figures on women’s contribution to Australian agriculture and highlights a number of revealing statistics. 

• The vast proportion of agricultural businesses are family owned with women representing 32% of Australia’s farm workforce in 1995-96. More than 70,000 women defined themselves as farmers or farm managers. 
• Women’s total contribution, when combining their on farm contribution, with off farm income and volunteer and community effort, equated to 48% of the total real farm income, worth in 1995-1996 close to $14 billion annually. 
• Less than 20% of agricultural decision-makers in 1995-96 were women. 
• While recent research on women’s representation in rural and regional Australia by the Department of Transport and Regional Services suggests that there has been some improvement over the last decade, this recent evidence shows that women continue to be significantly under represented in management and decision making. 

This gender imbalance, research suggests, severely impairs the diversity of leadership needed to improve the performance of the farm sector, both domestically and in a globally competitive market. 

An  independent evaluation of the Award, undertaken by Marketing & Communications Research Consultants-NFO Donovan Research confirmed the Award’s positive and permanent impact on rural and regional Australia. 

The evaluation report confirmed that the Award has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the personal skills of recipients, with over 80 percent claiming a great to significant impact and the vast majority of winners citing a marked improvement in their public speaking and presentation skills as a direct result of their participation in the Award. 

Industry and community awareness of recipients has also increased, as a result of the credibility and media attention afforded the Award, with close to 80 percent of recipients claiming increased to greatly increased industry and community awareness.

Industry and community leaders were extremely positive about the impact of the Award, highlighting increased industry profile and improved long term prospects, as obvious and tangible benefits of the Award. Community leaders also cited an obvious increase in community pride, self-belief and confidence as a direct result of one of their members winning the Award. 

Since the Award started in 2000, more than 110 women, representing every facet of agriculture and natural resource management in Australia, have been recognised for their unique skills and abilities and their capacity to make an even higher contribution to rural Australia. 

Past Award recipients have had a significant and permanent impact on agriculture and rural Australia. Two past recipients have now been recognised with Australian medals for their contribution to their industry, while numerous recipients now hold positions of influence on Ministerial and Premiers Advisory Committees and Reviews, Company and Corporation Boards, and as Chairs and Presidents of their respective industry organisation. Recipients have also gone on to become Australian Institute of Company Directors, Australian Rural Leadership, Churchill and Nuffield Scholars. 

Past recipients have used the Award and the Bursary to forge new markets for salmon into Japan, tropical wine into Singapore and Taiwan, yabbies into the United States and alpaca fibre into Italy. Recipients have also achieved a number of firsts, including the world first cultivation of marine tube worms for the recreational bait industry, the first national mohair classing training course and manual, the first best practice handling manual for the Australian tuna industry and the first manual handling and back care training program for rural industry. 

Nominations for the RIRDC Rural Women’s Award 2008 open from 1st August 2007 for a period of 11 weeks and close on World Rural Women’s Day-15th October 2007
. 
Applications can be accessed through relevant State and Territory primary industry agency, ABC Radio regional stations and can be downloaded from this website: www.ruralwomensaward.gov.au