The state of female artists is very good. But the very

The words of Gloria Steinem, "The state of female artists is very good. But the very definition of art has been biased in that 'art' was what men did in a European tradition and 'crafts' were what women and natives did. But it's actually all the same," are a revelation that pierce the heart of culture’s long injustice. Here she unmasks the ancient deception: that the creations of some are exalted as eternal art, while the works of others are dismissed as humble crafts. Yet both spring from the same divine flame of human creativity.

In this truth lies a wound borne across centuries. The towering cathedrals, the oil paintings, the marble statues of the European masters were crowned with the word art—while the woven cloth, the pottery, the beadwork, and the tapestries of women and indigenous peoples were relegated to the lesser name of crafts. But to weave color into fabric, to carve life from wood, to bead patterns that sing the story of a people—are these not also revelations of the human spirit? The bias was not in the work, but in the eyes that judged.

Consider the story of the quilts of enslaved women in America. Stitched in silence, often by candlelight, they were deemed mere crafts, domestic objects without grandeur. Yet within their patterns lay hidden maps, guiding souls to freedom along the Underground Railroad. What the world scorned as simple handiwork was in truth a profound form of art, a union of survival, beauty, and secret resistance. Those quilts, though denied honor in their time, bear witness now as masterpieces of both vision and courage.

So too in the traditions of the Navajo weavers, whose blankets and rugs carried not only patterns of color, but prayers, cosmologies, and ancestral wisdom. To call such work "craft" is to diminish the sacred labor of hands that preserved identity through thread and loom. In truth, their artistry stands equal to the brushstrokes of any European master, for both are born of the same eternal source: the yearning of humanity to leave behind beauty, meaning, and memory.

Thus Steinem’s words thunder as a call for justice: to break the false boundary between art and craft, between the exalted work of men and the overlooked creations of women and natives. Let all future generations understand that creativity knows no hierarchy, and that the human spirit, whether in clay or canvas, in stone or stitch, is one. For in the end, it is all the same river, flowing from the same source, carrying the voice of humanity into eternity.