The Recipe Book – By Keira Ivory

To be seen and not heard. To be a daughter. To be a wife. To be a mother. To be silent.

For too long women have been told what they are ‘to be’ in their communities instead of what they ‘can be’. Less than half a century ago, the only thing a woman could pass onto her daughter was her special recipe book with a sacred scone recipe. However, in today’s society, the women of our communities are changing the recipe book to something more significant and beneficial for their daughters. The phrase “rewriting the book of history” does not apply to this scenario due to the fact that these women are not ashamed of their recipe book and more specifically, their past, but are now adding new recipes on how to continue to drive change in their community.

Gina Rinehart, the wealthiest person in Australia, owns 9.2 million hectares of land and the largest mining company in Australia. This doesn’t seem unbelievable, however, what if I was to tell you that women were not allowed to list their legal status as a farmer until 1994, this was only 27 years ago. Virginia Woolf, a 20th century modernist once said: “For most of history anonymous was a woman.” which relates to this point appreciably. Women were always on the farm, whether it was as a mother, a farmhand or a wife, yet only now are they accepted as being a farmer. This ultimately was achieved through the constant drive for change and equality for women in their community. The recent drought was a constant struggle for the whole of Australia. However, it was evident how devastating it was for the rural communities. Households of farmers struggled significantly and the woman of the household was sometimes the only sane voice as drought and failure loomed. These women have evolved from being silenced, to women who have carried an entire community through what seemed to be an endless natural disaster.

Farmers wives however, did not always hold this status within their community, they gained their pride from being part of small groups within their towns such as the Country Women’s Association. Their most important role when this organisation was first founded was to make sure the scones were cooked and the tea was hot for when the men arrived back from their duties. Not only have these women passed the scone recipe on, but they are now driving a political agenda for rural issues, and are providing opportunities such as scholarships for young girls who are unable to attend schooling past the age of 16 and who will one day become the future voices of our community.

The women of rural communities don’t all have to fight for women’s rights or enter political issues to be able to claim that they are driving change in their community. Like the second generation Australian Lebanese woman, entrepreneur who founded and is managing a successful small business in Bathurst, New South Wales. She learnt this through the path that was blazed by her mother and the rural women role models that raised her. She now has a daughter of her own that she is raising with the same morals and goals that were taught to her.

Those who were silenced have now passed down a recipe book that has been added to by their daughters, grand daughters and great granddaughters, and who are now or soon, to be the voices of their community. This recipe book contains an infinite number of pages with room for the future generations to continue to read and add new recipes. However, it is important to remember that no matter how large the recipe book continues to grow, that grandma’s scone recipe will always remain at the beginning as a symbol of how far rural women have come.