The deep, red dirt that gets into everything; the deep, red dirt of her family's sheep farm in Victoria's west.

"I have a very early memory of just driving in the ute with my dad and grandfather when I was still very young, probably just two or three-years-old ... just driving around checking the sheep on the farm," Ms Bain says.

"Open spaces are big for me ... my friends either wanted to go into science or be a lawyer or a doctor. I thought that's not something I ever want to do."

The 22-year-old is studying agribusiness at Marcus Oldham College in Geelong.

Eventually, Ms Bain hopes to come back home to run the farm.

If she does, then she will be one of the lucky ones.

Women may be cracking the glass ceiling elsewhere, but when it comes to farming it is still slow going.

According to University of South Australia's Leonnie Blumson???, who is doing a PhD in gender inequality in farming family inheritance, there is a huge disparity in the way sons and daughters are treated.

She says in Australia it is estimated that just 10 per cent of farm successors are daughters.

"It makes the gender wage gap look pretty trivial in comparison," Ms Blumson says.

"Essentially, sons get the farm, which can be worth millions of dollars, whereas girls tend to just get whatever assets are leftover when the parents die."

Ms Blumson, who is herself from a farming family, says most farmers are likely to sell the farm if they have a daughter.

As part of her research, Ms Blumson conducted interviews and an anonymous online survey asking farmers' daughters to talk about their family's inheritance.

She says one of the hardest things was to get the women to participate. Similarly, few women were willing to speak to The Age about their experience. None would do it on the record.

Ms Blumson says family loyalty often stops women from talking about the gender imbalance.

"Women are conditioned to accept things the way they are and not to speak out," she says.

"And also speaking out would require them to acknowledge that they have been treated unfairly."

Ms Blumson says a lot of the women did not see their family's arrangement as being unfair.

"They believe all the things: that it is important to keep the farm in the family; 'oh, yes! It is right that it should go to the son'," she says.

"There were quite a few cases where women did inherit some land, but only small portions. But in the majority of cases there was still a massive disparity, some pretty shocking treatment towards the girls."

Most of the farmers and industry experts said things were changing with more women returning to the farm.

But Ms Blumson says if there is change, it is slow.

"From the data, there is really no significant change from in the generation since I was born [in 1961]," she says.

"The young women that I spoke to were around 30, and none of them were given the option of staying on the farm."

The minute Rachel's younger brother was born, she knew the family's farm in Western Australia would go to him.

"The importance of his being a son was not lost on us," Rachel says. "There were photos taken of the great-grandfather, grandfather, father and the son all in a row."

Rachel did get a small share of the family land - 1 per cent of the 4000 hectares.

But only after she married a farmer's son.

With further help from her parents-in-law the couple are now running their own farm.

"If I didn't have a farming husband, I would not have been considered for this assistance," she says.

However, some things are changing, with more women taking up agriculture studies.

Longerenong??? College - or Longy ??- is a historic agriculture institute in Victoria.

It was opened in 1889 in the Wimmera region, about 14 kilometres north-east of Horsham for the sons of the farmers. And there it has stood, teaching generation after generation everything from agribusiness to wool classing.

On its website, there is a sepia-coloured photo dated 1935 showing four men leaning against a dusty pick up truck in front of the college's main building. Another man is in the driving seat.

In 1972, Longy became one of the first agricultural colleges to accept female students.

General manager and former student John Goldsmith says when he was studying in the '80s the ratio was five men to one woman. Now it is evenly divided between the two.

In 2015 and 2016 the college had more full-time women students than men.

"Technology has really changed farming," Mr Goldsmith says.

"There is certainly less requirement in terms of physical capabilities. It is certainly very business-focused. It is just a very different world now."

Victorian Farmers Federation president David Jochinke??? says inheritance practices can vary depending on the type of farm.

"It's very hard to generalise," Mr Jochinke says.

"Probably on the small farms you will see the skew towards the men, on the larger farm that's not even a consideration.

"They are multi-faceted and now enable the different divisions of the farm to be run by different siblings."

And he says there is more change ahead.

"As a majority, as a rule, probably sons are looked on to take over the farm," Mr Jochinke says. "However, as a percentage, females are coming through the ranks in droves."

Margaret Willett is a lawyer who specialises in succession planning, which she says ensures the next generation can continue to farm effectively and be prosperous.

In her practice of more than 20 years, the biggest shift has been the price of land.

"The value of farming land has increased so significantly as to raise the question for many non-farmers 'why does the farmer get such a large inheritance and we don't?'," Ms Willett says.

"Because most farming families tend to put everything they have into their farm to support the business and to build their wealth."

She says it comes down to the survival of the farm.

"Many of the farmers feel they are custodians of the land and it must be passed as a whole to the next generation of farmer," Ms Willett says.

"I don't believe you can be in farming today and leave an equal inheritance for each of your children when you have only got one farming child, unless you have been very fortunate and been able to develop and produce a significant off-farm asset portfolio."

Usually, by the time a family contacts her, they have already identified which child will take over the farm ????- and it is usually a son.

"If there was a daughter in the family, she was probably directed or assisted in some way to find another path," she says.

"My experience is that usually there is one child in the family who is given the opportunity or is perhaps more suited."

Ms Willett says the question is if daughters are actively encouraged to take up farming or even told that it is an option.

"Is there opportunity for young women today to put their hand up and say 'I want to be a farmer', and is it received within individual families in a positive way?," she says.

Linda, who is in her mid-30s and has two younger brothers, says she was included in succession planning, but "when push came to shove" didn't get the farm.

"When I took a year off [after school] ??? [dad] wasn't encouraging of me to come back and work on the farm," Linda says.

"[My brothers] were encouraged 100 per cent."

Though Linda says she didn't really want to work on the land herself, she was interested in running it in collaboration with someone.

"I wanted to be involved but I had no experience in farming, I was never trained up in agriculture," she says.

"At a young age ??? we all went out, we did the sheep work, but come harvest time, we went and worked on CBH (sampling or weighing grains off the farm) and the boys worked on the headers and feeders (harvesting the crop on the farm). There was definitely a difference in boys and girls."

Linda eventually married a man who is working on a farm.

But when neither of the two brothers wanted to return, her parents wouldn't consider the couple.

"When push came to shove and the boys turned around and said 'we are not coming back and we have got another career' and I said 'I want to move back and I am in a relationship with someone who is involved in agriculture', it wasn't investigated further - it was just: 'well, no'."

The farm is now on the market.

"The thing with farming is yes, it is a business ??? it's the family home and you'd love it to go to the next generation and obviously your parents have an ideal plan ??? for one of the boys to come back and take over the farm," Linda says.

"If one of my [brothers] had chosen to be in agriculture and farming, they would be on the farm now."

Katrina Sasse is researching "the way forward for daughters" as part of a Nuffield Australia Farming Scholarship. She is investigating how to encourage, in particular, farmers' daughters to play a role in the continuity and survival of family farm businesses.

She says while gender roles are still rigid and it remains a taboo subject, it is the next generation of farmers, men aged between 30 to 45 years, who will be the shape-shifters.

"They are the ones that will really radically change the way that we perceive farming," Ms Sasse says.

"Because they are bringing their daughters out in the paddock; these daughters are on the tractors with them all the time, they are under their wings."

She says one of the barriers to females coming on the farm is the limited number of women in high-level positions.

Ms Sasse says there is a need to raise awareness and create pathways for women from an early age, including education and training.

"Having that discussion earlier on when you are going through the succession plan; making the daughters aware that it is a possibility for them and to encourage them, rather than let things go unsaid and assume that the son is going to take over," she says.

"The daughter has to speak up ??? their parents have to be on board with that family decision, and they have to believe it's possible."

Back on the land, Ms Bain stands surrounded by a "mob" of about 1000 sheep.

The sixth generation farmer is working alongside her father, David, penning the family's merino stock.

With a loud clap and a shout, she pushes the animals to walk through a foot bath.

It's a treatment for foot rot, something Ms Bain says is a recurring problem in the wet region of Victoria's Pyrenees.

Now and then her father offers advice, but despite her young age, it is clear she is no novice.

"I have grown up on the farm my whole life," Ms Bain says.

"Helping out dad on the farm and just running around after him, being a shadow for the last 20 years."

Her role grew from being the main gate opener for her father to helping him muster sheep and move them around.

Her father says passion, not gender, will be the deciding factor in who takes over the running of the farm.

"Katherine was always interested in being outdoors," Mr Bain says.

"She always had a good eye for livestock, she could pick up a sick sheep in a mob.

"She has always been one-track minded. She wanted to do something in agriculture even when she was quite young. Which path she takes now is up to her."

When Ms Bain finishes her Bachelor of Business in Agribusiness at the end of this year she will also have a grounding in finance and marketing.

"Every farm is a business," she says. "Learning ... the ins and out of business, is vital to running a farm."

Her younger brother, Alexander, 21, is studying architecture.

And though, there is no succession plan in place yet, Ms Bain says it has always been clear which one of the two siblings is more interested in farming.

"I was always the one really excited to go out and help dad from early on," she says. "Never thought about being anywhere else.

"When you are growing up on the farm you are always outside helping out, you do get dirt in your blood and it does kind of stick with you and you really don't think about anything else you could do."

Some names have been changed to protect privacy.