March 8, International Women’s Day
Why Safeguarding Women’s Work Matters
“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and we must make it our culture.”
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2014
International Women’s Day is often marked with celebrations, panels and messages of encouragement. Yet beneath the slogans sits a deeper truth about how societies actually function: culture does not emerge from institutions alone. It is shaped and sustained by people — by those who teach, who create, who care, who transmit knowledge across generations. When we look closely at the daily architecture of culture, women appear everywhere within it.
The dominant narrative of the cultural sector tends to focus on visible outputs. Artworks. Performances. Fashion collections. Books. Exhibitions. Cultural institutions celebrate these achievements and the individuals behind them. But culture does not begin on a stage or in a gallery. It begins in homes, classrooms, workshops and communities where knowledge, language, values and practices are quietly transmitted.
This transmission is rarely dramatic. It happens through teaching. Through making. Through guidance and care. It happens when skills are passed from one generation to another. It happens when communities maintain craft traditions, culinary knowledge, storytelling practices and forms of collective celebration. These acts form the fabric of living culture.
Across the world, women are central to this process. They teach children how to learn and relate to others. They carry knowledge of craft and making. They shape family and community rituals. They hold memory, language, and everyday practices that allow culture to remain alive rather than simply archived. This work is not always formally recognised, yet it forms the foundation upon which cultural life rests.
The Creative Women’s Association describes this reality in simple terms: women are not merely participants in culture. Women are culture. The skills, care, knowledge and creativity that flow through everyday life are inseparable from the people who sustain them. When those practices disappear, communities do not simply lose activities — they lose continuity.
This is why safeguarding matters. International cultural policy increasingly recognises that living heritage — the skills and practices carried by people — must be protected and transmitted. Around the world, many countries support this work through frameworks such as the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which acknowledges that culture exists not only in monuments and artefacts but in the living knowledge of communities.
At its core, safeguarding is about continuity. It recognises that cultural practices must be sustained across generations if they are to remain meaningful. Teachers must be supported. Skilled makers must be recognised. Knowledge holders must have pathways to pass on what they know. Without these structures, culture gradually erodes even while its symbols remain visible.
This challenge is particularly relevant for women’s work. Much of the labour through which culture is maintained has historically been treated as informal or peripheral. Teaching, caregiving, creative practice and community leadership have often been understood as natural contributions rather than professional expertise. As a result, the systems that recognise and stabilise these contributions have often been incomplete.
The Creative Women’s Association focuses on building the infrastructure that allows women’s cultural work to be recognised and sustained. This includes systems that connect skills, production and provenance — frameworks that allow creative practice to operate with the same structural legitimacy as established sectors such as manufacturing or the trades.
In practical terms, this means recognising women across multiple dimensions of cultural contribution. Women in cultural leadership guide institutions and communities. Women in cultural production shape textiles, craft, design and material culture. Women in education transmit knowledge through teaching and mentorship. Women in creative practice shape music, storytelling and performance. Together, these roles form a living network through which culture continues to evolve.
The emerging Women in Culture initiative builds on this understanding. Its purpose is simple: to recognise and celebrate the women whose work sustains cultural life. From cultural leadership to cultural production — from the makers of textiles and objects to the educators and mentors who pass on knowledge — these contributions deserve visibility and recognition.
This recognition is not symbolic. It acknowledges that cultural continuity depends on people who commit time, skill and care to maintaining it. When those contributions are supported, communities remain resilient. When they are overlooked, knowledge disappears quietly over time.
International Women’s Day therefore offers more than an opportunity to celebrate achievement. It offers a moment to recognise the systems that sustain culture itself. If people make culture, then the safeguarding of cultural knowledge must include safeguarding the work of the women who carry it.
The message is simple but powerful. Women are not on the margins of culture. Women are its teachers, makers, leaders and stewards. The safeguarding of women’s work is therefore not a niche cultural issue. It is central to the future of culture itself.
Read Related Article:
“Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage” – UNESCO
Designed with WordPress