VIA Zoom, about 65 women celebrated International Day of Rural Women last Thursday by tuning into a virtual summit, held by Big Ideas Rural and Generation Ag.
The summit aimed to connect rural women from all over Australia, to inspire them and provide a platform for them to network.
Keynote speaker was Jo Palmer - a business woman from The Rock, New South Wales, who founded Pointer Remote, a virtual platform that helps rural women find work and saw her win the 2019 AgriFutures NSW-ACT Rural Women of the Year award and then the national accolade.
Ms Palmer shared her story of how she established the platform with some tips that she acquired along the way.
Determined to work remotely, Ms Palmer realised being a business owner was the best way to make that happen.
After training and working as a teacher, she created and exited two other businesses before she started Pointer Remote in 2017, but she has always had a passion for empowering rural women.
"The core of business resilience in women is connection - it's so much easier to bounce back from adversity when you have good people around you," Ms Palmer said.
"Connections have always been a driving force behind the decisions I make.
"As I think about the theme for today (International Day of Rural Women) and as I talk about 'our Australia', for me our Australia is thinking about rural Australia and what rural Australia means to rural women."
Despite her success in business and her awards of recognition, Ms Palmer remained humble and said while being a business owner was rewarding, there were challenges which were heightened by being a parent and having to manage a household.
The saying 'it takes a village' rings true for Ms Palmer as she said outsourcing jobs and labour (such as childcare, house cleaning and ironing), where possible, created more time for people to work on their business.
Many rural women wear different hats for different roles, she said time was best spent only doing the roles that would benefit the business.
Ms Palmer said this was best done by breaking up the to-do list with different job titles - chief financial officer, childcare, cook, human resources manager etc. - and list the tasks that each role needs to do.
"Then you'll be able to see which position has the longest to-do list and if you have some money for wages, it's the easiest way to figure out the best person/s to recruit," she said.
"You can also calendar block chunks of time for tasks, that way you don't cherry pick the to do list.
"This is really good for the tasks you dislike and it's good to do them at the start of the week/day, so they're not hanging over you."
Mum guilt is talked about regularly among working women, particularly those who outsource childcare to make them available for their job.
But Ms Palmer said she had "shelved mum guilt", because ultimately she was working hard to provide for her family.
"My daughters are resilient from seeing me work my bum off and I think that's good for them," she said.
"I think it's good for both boys and girls - girls can see they can do it too and boys can grow up seeing there is space for the women in their lives to work, just like them."
Also key to managing work and family life is planning.
Ms Palmer has weekly meetings with her husband to discuss meals, who is doing drop-offs and pick-ups and they have a shared calendar for social events, "which helps us to communicate as a couple and have a social life".
"We try to keep the kids' weeks/days as smooth as possible - it's just a different person doing it," she said.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit Australia, like countless other businesses, Pointer Remote struggled with the changes.
"My company had previously made most of its money from businesses wanting to advertise job vacancies and when COVID-19 happened I felt my business model had become obsolete," she said.
"While I acknowledged my privilege over other people, my anxiety was at a high and I couldn't get out of bed, but I spoke to a psychologist via Zoom."
But Ms Palmer is a resilient woman and she managed to adapt her business model based on her 2019 AgriFutures project.
For her project, she found that women lacked confidence which was a major barrier for them gaining work.
"If there was an additional six per cent of women in the Australian workforce, Australia's gross domestic product would be about $25 billion higher," she said.
Ms Palmer's business has now shifted towards working with rural communities to access workers and working with community stakeholders to prepare for future infrastructure such as childcare centres, which ultimately helps attract new people to living in rural towns.
"Remote work can play a major role in keeping these places that we call home buzzing," she said.
Ms Palmer said the pandemic had made her reassess life behind the scenes and have a "reality check".
"I now share more of my 'real life' on social media and try to keep my company Instagram as human as possible," she said.
