Mapping the research on gender, LGBTQI minorities and heritage across social sciences and humanities

Abstract

Several scholars have emphasised the impact of gender on the notion, uses, and practices of heritage. Critical research dealing with gender, sexuality, and heritage is, however, rare. This article examines the research on gender and heritage across social sciences and humanities and shows how it is also gendered. Our meta-synthesis of articles selected from the Web of Science (WOS) combines a quantitative analysis of bibliometric information and coded contents of 427 relevant articles with a close reading of a sub-sample of 13 articles that explicitly deconstruct the binary gender system and its heteronormativity by focusing on LGBTQI minorities. Our results indicate that the articles on gender and heritage are predominantly written by one woman author, and related to this, mainly focus on cis women or femininity, which partly perpetuates a bias that gender is a ‘women’s issue’. Moreover, the analysed scholarship is Western dominated and Eurocentric. Although the articles in our sub-sample critically explore narratives, events, and sites dealing with LGBTQI minorities and their participation in heritage by queering it, the studies lack a critical approach to the notion of heritage and the use of power in heritagization processes.