This document discusses women's important but often overlooked role in preserving cultural heritage through the transmission of traditions, customs, and knowledge across generations. It notes that women are often responsible for passing down culinary, medical, and other practices within families. While women play a key part in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, international agreements and organizations have failed to properly recognize their central role. The document provides examples from different communities around the world that illustrate how women ensure the continuity of cultural practices and expressions.

1. -BY ASTHA MISHRA ROLL NO.-224120 MINOR

3. According to the Tunisian author and politician
Abdelaziz Thaalbi, “the woman is the guardian
of the family, the conservator of society”
As Abdelaziz Thaalbi argues, through their
community role women are the “guardians of
society”. This role refers to women’s
responsibility for the transmission of customs
and traditions, which UNESCO has defined as
“intangible cultural heritage”

4. Women may not have played a dominant role in the recording
of what is commonly understood as official history, but they
surely have been the epicentres and key forces of social and
cultural heritage preservation. They have performed the role
of carriers of oral histories and narratives, while themselves
being the active bearers and symbols of our social and
cultural traditions. Being the nodal points of every familial
unit, women have nurtured and sustained these traditions
within their families over generations. This essay attempts to
shed light and reconsider the significance of their role, so as
to bring to the forefront this rather underplayed factor in
preserving our society and culture.

5. Article 2 of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the
Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH)[ defines this broad term as
the scope of “practices, representations, expressions,
knowledge and skills – as well as the instruments, artefacts
and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities,
groups and, where appropriate, individuals recognize as part
of their cultural heritage”. It is then transmitted from
“generation to generation” through oral expressions,
language, performing arts or social practices
Prior to the adoption of the 2003 Convention, the
international community therefore engaged in reflections
regarding the role of women in the transmission of cultural
heritage in their communities.

6. In the Symposium report it is stated that: “women are also custodians of intangible cultural heritable which
encompasses, among other forms, the performing arts including music, culinary and medicinal knowledge and
the know-how for the creation of material culture” Here, stereotypes related to women are persistent in the
transmission of ICH. Indeed, the woman transmits to her children the domains that are “traditionally” attached to
her (cooking, care, etc.). In the home, the man plays a secondary role in the woman’s tasks, which explains the
predominance of women’s responsibility over men in the transmission of heritage.
As a result of this symposium, UNESCO adopted the above-mentioned Convention without mentioning the
preponderant role of women in the transmission of ICH. Their work within the ICH remains unrecognised
and invisible in the same way as the domestic work identified as the invisible work of women by sociologists
Camille Robert and Louise Toupin. Once again in this case, the role of women in culture, which is so pivotal,
is not being acknowledged. This phenomenon is paradoxical since, although unrecognized as such, women
continue to be the main actors in the preservation and transmission of ICH within their own community.

8. In Nigeria, the continuity of
the Gèlèdé], festivities,
ceremonies, practiced in
particular by the Yoruba-
Nago community, is
guaranteed by the women,
thus avoiding their decline.
Eliza Griswold and Seamus
Murphy
cite the example of
Afghanistan where landay, an
oral poetry performed by the
largely illiterate women of the
Pashtun community, allows
them to express themselves
orally in a public space and to
be socially “recognised”.
Initially, they did not really
belong to the public sphere.

9. In Iran, the theatrical
performance of Naqqali has now
been made accessible to women,
although it was previously
forbidden. Women can take on
the role of storytellers and
perform in front of an audience,
on the condition that it is an
exclusively female one. This shift
grants Iranian women a special
social status, as they have the
opportunity to become
storytellers, which is a rewarding
role to play in Iranian culture
in the Malaka tribe in Indonesia[2
women created a new cultural
heritage during the Second World
War to escape the fate of “comfort
women”, i.e. sex slaves, for the
Japanese army. Because the
Japanese military only showed
respect towards married women,
they covered their bodies with
tattoos, signifying that they were
married, in a bid to protect
themselves from the invading
military

10. Some traditions and customs are passed on only by people of the same sex according to gender
stereotypes and the division of labour within the household. For example, falconry, as mentioned by
UNESCO in its report Heritage and Gender, is exclusively transmitted to men by men, while the art of
Mangoro pottery in Côte d’Ivoire is transmitted mainly to women by women.
Among the practices transmitted between women, culinary traditions occupy a central place due to the
traditional division of labor within the household, which results in women being responsible for
providing their families with the food that they need on a daily basis. Eve-Marie Lavaud on culinary
transmission in Mediterranean culture, states that the cook “is then a woman and above all a mother
In the same way, Manuel Calvo maintains in his writings that “cooking is eminently and inherently
feminine, as is its learning

13. THANKYOU
BY ASTHA MISHRA
CLASS- BA I (SEM 2)
ROLL NO.-224120
SUBJECT –SOCIOLOGY (MINOR)