Country Women's Association

This is sort of like a combination of 4H club and a church women's group. Anybody who saw the movie Babe might remember that the farm-wife was a CWA member. The stereotyped member of this group is a woman who loves her queen, holds staunch old-fashioned values, gets together regularly with other women to gossip while doing homecrafts, sells lamingtons (like homemade Twinkies) for charity and performs various community services.

When I was promoting the Local Economic Trading System (a community currency system with similarities to barter) in Victoria we had an odd assortment of supporters including hippies, environmentalists, elderly, single mothers and Country Women's Association members. The CWA members spoke of how they ran a similar system during the Great Wars, so that people were better able to survive on their rations. Their experience at times proved invaluable.

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