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چکیده مقالات همایش بینالمللی جایگاه زن در تمدن ایران و اسلام172
Women, Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development
Janet Blake1
In 1999, the Islamic Republic of Iran proposed a forward-looking pro-
gramme for the biennial budget of UNESCO in 1999 entitled: “Women, in-
tangible cultural heritage and development”. Today, after more than 20 years,
still confront the questions: What is the importance of women’s contribution
to ICH and how does it contribute towards more sustainable forms of devel-
opment? This paper seeks to respond to these in the light of nearly 15 years of
experience of implementing UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguard-
ing of Intangible Cultural Heritage and developments that have taken place
within it. In particular, it addresses the role that intangible cultural heritage
(ICH) can play in supporting forms of development that are sustainable from
cultural, social and environmental, as well as economic, points of view. In
relation to this, the specific and important role played by women and girls vis-
à-vis this heritage, in particular in providing the context for its enactment and
its transmission, is also explored. Just as the contribution of women towards
development is frequently hidden as ‘women’s traditional work’, so much of
the contribution women make to ICH is dismissed as ‘what women do’. This
paper seeks to lift the veil that obscures the vital contribution of women to
creating, enacting, practising and transmitting ICH and to demonstrate how
important that is not only for the lives of women and girls but also for the
whole of society.
1. Associate Professor and Head of the Human Rights Group, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti
University (Tehran).
