Articles | Volume 8, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-8-285-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.Gender, migration, and drought: an exploratory study of women's roles in Mallee farming communities
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- Final revised paper (published on 13 Oct 2025)
- Preprint (discussion started on 07 May 2024)
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor
| : Report abuse
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-1281', Alison Sheridan, 18 Jun 2024
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Anna Kosovac, 18 Jun 2024
- AC2: 'Reply on RC1', Anna Kosovac, 25 Sep 2024
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-1281', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Jul 2024
- AC3: 'Reply on RC2', Anna Kosovac, 25 Sep 2024
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RC3: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-1281', Anonymous Referee #3, 29 Jul 2024
- AC4: 'Reply on RC3', Anna Kosovac, 25 Sep 2024
Peer review completion
AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload
ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (02 Oct 2024) by Louise Arnal

AR by Anna Kosovac on behalf of the Authors (14 Nov 2024)
Author's response
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ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Jan 2025) by Louise Arnal
RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (21 Apr 2025)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by editor) (30 Apr 2025) by Louise Arnal

AR by Anna Kosovac on behalf of the Authors (14 May 2025)
Author's response
Author's tracked changes
Manuscript
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by editor) (19 May 2025) by Louise Arnal

AR by Anna Kosovac on behalf of the Authors (01 Jul 2025)
Author's response
Author's tracked changes
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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (03 Jul 2025) by Louise Arnal

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (04 Jul 2025) by Kirsten v. Elverfeldt (Executive editor)

AR by Anna Kosovac on behalf of the Authors (07 Jul 2025)
Author's response
Manuscript
I enjoyed reading this exploratory paper and believe it has the potential to contribute to the literature on gender and farming through the more critical lens of race/class. My comments reflect the areas where I feel the paper could be developed further.
This paper offers an interesting exploration of how a very small sample of women within the Mallee region of Australia view their roles as decision makers around matters concerning drought and water management. As such, it fits the scope of the special issue . It offers some novel insights into how the roles may differ in the different operating environments of dryland and irrigated farming eg the utility of identity as a farmer rather than internal identity; questions of difference around who has the 'right' to be there in terms those with longer/shorter connection to place; women's role in community cohesion as a form of community resilience in the face of drought.
While I understand the population of interest in the Malllee is small, the arguments would be more persuasive if there were more than 6 participants. There is a reflection in the paper that the online interview approach may have limited the sample (p.5) - if the research is to be developed further it would be worth investing in face to face interviews to build the sample size. I recognise that reference is made to the themes being checked with a local working group (p.5 lines 140-145) but as little detail is provided here, I am still left feeling there needs to be more input from the women.
I am interested in the distinctions flagged in Figure 1 - my queries are:
a) under irrigation you have flagged small farm whereas for dryland you have labelled as small family farm - is this deliberate? My understanding is that irrigated small farms would be family owned too - so am assuming this is slippage, but the later section about the 'transient' nature of irrigated farms suggests it could be an implicit value judgement. I am also left asking are there no large scale farms in dryland farming in the Mallee? Mapping the players out more fully would be a useful development of this section of the paper.
b) the break up of the irrigated small family farms into 'settlers' or 'migrants' prompted me to think about the values implicit in the words, which is touched on in section 4.2, but I think could be interrogated more critically. It seems from p.6 (lines 185-) that migrants are those who have come in the past 20 years (and non-English speaking) - while settlers (arguably they are simply earlier migrants) have been there for more than one generation and are more 'like' those in dryland farming. The 'othering' of those in irrigated horticulture is flagged by the authors and while I agree that race and class based distinctions (identified by Castro Rodriguez and Pini) deserve more attention, the arguments included in this paper would have more credence if the sample was larger and there was more primary data to support the claims. It seems there is a mix of the authors' observations of the communities more generally in here, rather than them emerging clearly from the small sample.
Other issues I believe warrant attention include:
p.5 lines 130-135 - reference is made to 'the broad questions being developed as a guide... from themes in the literature about gender and drought'' but no details are provided about the questions. How the coding occurred then seems like a black box. Fleshing this section out further for the reader would be helpful.
p.9 lines 265-270 - reference is made to the increasing number of women in professional ag roles as though they may take on caring for the community roles too. Why are transient(?) (white/educated) professional women seen as better carers of their community than the 'migrant' women? I am playing devil's advocate here, but think the arguments need to be interrogated more for their implicit assumptions.
On p.10 line 320 reference is made to paying attention to non-dominant voices, but it's not clear to me that there are any non-dominant (in this case migrant women) voices included. Fleshing out the characteristics of (a larger) sample population would help to make visible the diversity of voices included.
(editing - there remain a few typos throughout and some missing references on p.7)
I wish you well in the further development of this timely, place-based interrogation of gender and farming around water issues. I look forward to seeing its further development.