ABSTRACT
This chapter by Margaret Alston, Josephine Clarke, and Kerri Whittenbury tracks the story of Alana Johnson's life. Having been raised in a multi-generational farming family in the southeast of Australia in the 1960s, she was the product of a conservative Catholic gender prescription, production focused farming practices with virtually no consideration of environmental impacts, and an agricultural industry that rendered the participation and contribution of women invisible. Alston, Clarke, and Whittenbury give an accurate account of the longstanding invisibility of women in agriculture, but finally this is changing in the agriculture and environment sectors in Australia. Patrilineal inheritance has been normal practice in farming families in Australia and the resulting gender equity issues are well known. Gender compliance and waiting for men to bring about change will not achieve results. What is man-made can be unmade and remade, but this will have to be led by women themselves.
