Women must shape the future of the meat industry, trailblazing conference told

More of them are needed to not only ease a serious labour shortage but to take more leadership roles and shape the industry's future.

Speaking at this week's inaugural Meat Business Women conference in Melbourne, Mr Hutchinson told the 200 participants they had to be catalysts for getting more gender diversity into what traditionally has been a male-dominated industry, particularly at the top.

Women were half the population but only 25 per cent of the meat industry's workforce at a time when the sector was screaming out for an injection of talented, smart people.

He said the women were already playing key roles throughout the meat industry including the "empowered" females he worked with at AMIC, the peak body representing processors, exporters, retailers and smallgoods manufacturers.

Mr Hutchinson said women had the potential to "send the industry into the stratosphere" through their natural skills in areas such as mentoring, managing people, networking, innovation and relationship building.

"Before Melissa Fletcher (CEO of major sheepmeat processor, Fletcher International Exports) started to get involved in things like the Australian Meat Processor Corporation board, we rarely spoke about people," he said.

"I think that's what women in our industry start to bring forward," he said.

He said AMIC, which was instrumental in the formation of Meat Business Women in Australia, was looking for input and new ideas from women to help chart its future direction.

They also had a big role to play in major issues including the rise of veganism and animal activism and making out-of-touch politicians in Canberra understand the meat industry existed beyond the farm.

He said many of the animal activists invading farms, feedlots, saleyards and abattoirs were young women who weren't going to listen to the assurances of overweight middle-aged men about the welfare and treatment of animals.

"What we are seeing are young impressionable people who have very limited understanding of what our industry does and what it supports. Every person who plays for a footy club in regional Australia is normally being sponsored by the local butcher shop who also supplies the meat tray for the Friday night raffle."

While not critical that politicians now focused heavily on farmers, he said the whole meat supply chain needed their help and support.

Women could bring a much sharper focus to explaining what the meat industry meant to families, regional communities and regional jobs.

The industry directly employed 55,000 people and 150,000 when secondary jobs were counted. It needed funding for more traineeships, apprenticeships and development.

"We are looking to you (women) to start to get out there and start saying, 'this is about me, about my family, about my business'. Canberra is not listening," he said.

Organiser, Stacey McKenna, AMIC, said the event highlighted not only a great desire among women to build their careers in the sector and foster opportunity for others, but also a few clear barriers to entry.

"The atmosphere at this event is difficult to describe. The women who participated - and the men too - were incredibly passionate. This has been a long time coming. We had a pretty big waiting list of people who wanted to join us but couldn't get tickets," she said.

"The real takeaways are that women want meaningful careers in this industry. And they want to help other women find careers in this industry. But it's not always that easy. Unsurprisingly, many talked about the challenges of coming back after maternity leave, or finding support to either move up the career ladder or do jobs traditionally done by men."

Over several facilitated workshop sessions the conference identified some ways the sector could attract more women, from primary school curriculum change to considering boardroom quotas to ensure female voices at the board table.

Interestingly, there was a complete lack of graphs and bar charts during the speeches by the keynote speakers at the conference.

They spoke frankly about how they had overcome setbacks and barriers in their meat industry careers.

Speaker Dalene Wray, CEO of OBE Organic, summed up the collaborative mood at the event, telling the audience: "Success awaits you. We've got your back."

She also spoke emotionally about the pain she still felt over the death of her twin brother, Deon, in a helicopter crash near Birdsville in 1996.

Melissa Fletcher, an indigenous woman and head of Fletcher International Exports, spoke about confronting racism. She said women could "nicen" the meat industry workplace.  

Ashley Gray, 29, general manager of Beef and Lamb in NZ, spoke about the devastation she suffered in the unexpected collapse of her marriage.