Human Rights Dimensions of Gender and Intangible Cultural Heritage

The gender dynamics of cultural heritage have, until recently, been seriously overlooked and have certainly not featured greatly in discussions about protecting cultural heritage under international law. The multiple ways in which gender and cultural heritage interact are extremely complicated and often raise highly sensitive issues, including a number of important human rights-related ones. These are especially those connected with traditional cultural practices that appear to discriminate against subordinate gender groups, most frequently women and girls. In this article, the potential of the gendered aspects of cultural heritage to be both damaging to the human rights of, and a source of strength for, different gender-defined groups is explored and the need to take a nuanced approach to this question is shown. Although material aspects of heritage also exhibit important gendered aspects, for example the customary rules governing access by different gender groups to sacred sites or the gender-based differentiation in the production and/or use of artefacts, I focus my discussion here on intangible cultural heritage (ICH) for two reasons: first, it is in relation to ICH (traditional practices, performances, knowledge etc. and the associated material elements) that specific gender-based roles are most obvious; and, second, the human rights-related issues are generally clearer in the case of ICH.