The future is female – Happy International Rural Women’s Day!
The Livestock Industries team based at Katherine Research Station in the Northern Territory is breaking down gender stereotypes with an all-female team.
The team consists of 8 young women who all originated from different parts of Australia, their shared passion for the Northern Pastoral industry landed them in their various roles of beef research officers, technical officers, rangelands research and extension.
Employed by the Northern Territory’s Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, their roles are to improve the profitability and productivity of the Northern Beef industry as well as communicating research to pastoralists, the general public and to the scientific community.
Each day varies depending on job title, but flexibility of skills within the team mean that anyone’s daily activities can take them anywhere across the NT and could include (but is not limited to): running on-station rangeland management courses, organising events and field days, social media posts, mustering and collecting crush side data at one of the 6 government run research stations, trialling new tech or collecting pasture and soil data to complete carrying capacity assessments.
Whilst all these women are at the office for the purpose of work, there is also an embedded culture of mateship and they can often be found forming sports teams, campdrafting and socialising together in their time off!
