For centuries, the dominant cultural belief has been that a woman's Recollection — her engagement with trauma, identity, and injustice through visual means — is intrinsically secondary to that of a man's. In 2007, Fricker termed this effect epistemic injustice. She explained that female knowledge bearers, especially those marginalised by race, class, or colonial frameworks, often find their ability to express their experiences obstructed by a hermeneutical gap or a 'male-as-norm' bias. This systematic side-lining of female recollection within our cultural and artistic narratives has had a harmful impact on broader collective stories, which thus lack a fundamentally balanced viewpoint.

It wasn't until the mid-20th century, when feminist ideology was slowly gaining legitimacy, that the creative aspects of female identity began to garner meaningful attention from cultural and societal narratives. Female artists had previously been compelled to operate in secrecy and faced significant challenges in gaining recognition from male-dominated institutions; this change in perspective allowed female artistry to be acknowledged as an important and distinct field.