Women’s participation in the construction and re-signification of industrial mining heritage: memories, practice and power

Abstract

Industrial heritage has traditionally been associated with male productive activities, a linkage that has rendered women’s participation invisible both in its social construction and in the processes of re-signification that followed deindustrialization. During the industrial boom in company towns, women played a fundamental role in sustaining the social fabric and everyday life, and more recently they have assumed a key position in the preservation of collective memory, the reappropriation of industrial vestiges, and the creation of new forms of heritage-making from community-based perspectives. At present, a substantive shift in their role can be observed: from historically marginalized actors within official narratives, they have become central agents in the conservation of industrial memory and in the transformation of former infrastructures into spaces for encounter, care, and cultural action. These practices democratize heritage processes and foster new ways of inhabiting rooted in feminine, community-oriented approaches.