Semantic debate, political question: how the word “marriage” questions the place of women in cultural heritage

Why did we have to wait so long to (re)discover that women had also participated in the creation of our common cultural heritage? Why do we always use the term heritage and what does it say about the place we give to women, artists, creators, scientists, inventors, etc.?

For eight years now, the Interregional Federation for Gender Equality in Arts and Culture (also known as the HF Movement) has been fighting to rehabilitate the term “ marriage », which, contrary to popular belief, is not a neologism. What does this semantic and political struggle reveal? Lighting.

What does the semantic debate around the word “Matrimoine” reveal?

In an article by Mwavedated September 13, 2023, the journalist Claire Legros summarizes the political and semantic issue represented by the word marriage (and its cancellation over time): it is ” a very ancient word, whose history sheds light on the methodical invisibility of female creativity and its role in culture and the arts, before researchers brought it back to life in the last twenty years “.

Rehabilitating the word marriage thus allows us to raise awareness and recognize the contribution of women to the world’s cultural heritage.

Where does the term “Marriage” come from?

As told in the article by Worldwhich is based on the work of the American anthropologist Ellen Hertz, the first occurrence of the word, in the form “ matremuine » in Old French, dates back to 1155 and designates the “ mother’s property », “in the same way that inheritance refers to that of the father. From the 13th^And century at the end of the Renaissance, the word “marriage” is commonly used in the context of inheritance » specifies the journalist.

In 1634 the French Academy was created and with it the choice to make the male gender the default. The word marriage therefore disappears from dictionaries, in favor of its masculine analogue. It was only in the 2010s that it returned to prominence, thanks to the work of researcher and director Aurore Evain: “ the one that allowed us to rehabilitate the use of the term “ author » makes heritage one of the standards in the battle for equality in arts and culture » he adds The world.

What are Heritage Days and why celebrate them?

The 2023 report of the Ministry of Culture’s Equality Observatory demonstrates this well: even today, despite the equal efforts implemented in the cultural sector, women remain a minority (41%) in the management of public cultural institutions.

As regards the artists exhibited, the imbalance is even more evident:

The representation of women in the collective catalog of French museum collections, Mona Lisa, is a reflection of this history. Out of a total of 511,979 entries by almost 35,000 artists, there are 2,304 female artists, with 20,575 works. They therefore represent 6.6% of the artists present in the database, with 4% of the number of works. Although very low, these percentages for 2021 are still higher than those known for the second half of the nineteenth century. In France there were then 3,818, or 1.74% of the listed artists…

Website of the Ministry of Culture, “Museums in France”

For this reason, in 2015 the Interregional Federation for Gender Equality in Arts and Culture created the Heritage Days that make visible and revalue “the cultural heritage of women, which the term heritage tends to make invisible “.

The Movement has also launched a petition to rehabilitate this term, which has fallen into disuse, and “ (re)build our cultural heritage “. The target ? ” Making the forgotten works of women of the past visible again by integrating them into our global heritage “. It’s a way of” give them the place they should have had if history had not been written with the male gender. This rediscovered heritage also allows younger generations to project themselves into careers by having female role models. », we read on the petition website.

The federation calls for the European Heritage Days (PEC) to be renamed European Heritage and Heritage Days (JEMP). If some cities such as Paris, Brussels or Rouen celebrate double heritage today, too many communities still do not integrate it into their thinking:

In fact, Heritage is not yet inscribed in language, space and public opinion and even less in national and local cultural policy. Worse still, too many cultural institutions ignore Heritage in their cultural reflection and action or others are content to leave the initiative to activist collectives such as the HF Movement.

lematrimoine.fr, Petition.

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