Lisa Boda Went Looking for the Soul of the “Culture Lady”

The slide was supposed to compare men’s and women’s cultural participation. The women’s column listed theater, libraries, dance performances, painting, reading, diary or poetry writing, handicrafts, study circles and photography. The men’s column was blank.

The image appeared during a seminar in Gothenburg on a report titled “Broadening Participation in Cultural Life: Barriers and Opportunities.” The report examines Swedes’ cultural habits and asks why the political goal of making cultural participation available to everyone remains so difficult to achieve, regardless of which government is in power.

Many participants had come to learn more about people who do not take part in cultural life. Lisa Boda was there for those who participate most. The response to the empty men’s column was not confusion among the cultural-sector professionals in the room, but knowing sighs and scattered laughter. “Of course,” someone whispered. “The culture ladies go to everything.”

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Of course, the culture ladies go to everything.

Boda’s search for the “culture lady” leads through a thicket of stereotypes. The figure is imagined as a woman in a kaftan, scanning the room for free red wine and fragile artistic egos. The mockery comes from several directions. Annie Ernaux, Jonas Gardell and Jimmie Åkesson have all used dismissive images of such women, while other insults include “culture vultures,” “Canada geese of culture” and “batik witches,” a term used by far-right opponents against women they dislike.

The label points to a real pattern beneath the caricature. Women dominate participation in the cultural activities shown at the seminar, while the men’s list contains no entries. Boda’s article asks who these women are beyond the insult and why their prominence in cultural life so often becomes a target of ridicule.

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The culture ladies’ right to get a little tingly in the crotch.