Celebrating Women’s Power This International Women’s Day

In awe of Mother Earth: an overview of women’s economic participation on a global scale

For as long as we have traced human history, women and the earth have been bound together in a quiet, resilient economy of care. While formal systems of power often kept women out of land deeds, bank ledgers, and boardrooms, there was one form of wealth that moved in their hands, from mother to daughter, across borders and generations: gold.

For hundreds of years in many cultures, gold jewelry was the only asset women were permitted to own outright. Land was registered to fathers, husbands, and sons; titles and trade flowed through male names. Yet at births, betrothals, weddings, and milestones, families placed gold bangles, chains, and rings directly onto women’s bodies. These pieces were more than decoration. They were a portable inheritance, a private safety net, and, often, a woman’s only negotiable wealth in moments of crisis or transition.

The story begins deep beneath our feet. Long before it is shaped into a ring or necklace, gold is part of the earth’s own memory — forged in ancient cosmic events, carried in the planet’s crust, waiting in veins of ore and riverbeds. Mother Earth has been the first and oldest benefactor in women’s economies, offering metals and gemstones that can be transformed, but not destroyed. Gold does not rust or vanish with time. It can be melted, re‑shaped, and reborn, carrying traces of every life it has touched.

Across continents, this alchemy of earth into security shows up in different ways. In South Asia, bridal gold has long functioned as a woman’s financial anchor, her jewelry box doubling as a bank. In parts of the Middle East and North Africa, gold coins and chains are given at key life moments to safeguard women against the unpredictability of politics, harvests, or markets. In many European and North American families, heirloom rings and lockets quietly preserved value through wars, migrations, and economic upheaval. Wherever women’s access to formal financial systems was limited, gold stepped into the gap.

Today, the global picture of women’s economic participation is changing, but the symbolism of gold remains strikingly current. Women are starting businesses at unprecedented rates, leading households, and shaping policy, yet wage gaps and barriers to ownership still persist in many regions. Against that backdrop, the idea of holding something tangible and enduring — a piece of the earth itself — continues to resonate. A gold band or a silver pendant may be small in size, but it represents something spacious: the right to own, to keep, to choose when and how value is passed on.

At bluboho, we see every piece we create as part of this ongoing story. The gold and gemstones we work with are gifts from the earth, transformed by human hands into markers of life’s most meaningful moments: commitments made, children welcomed, friendships honored, self‑love reclaimed. When a mother chooses a ring to mark her child’s birth, or a daughter selects a necklace to honor her own turning point, they are participating in a lineage far older than any holiday — a lineage of women using adornment as a form of agency, memory, and quiet power.

International Women’s Day invites us to celebrate women’s achievements and to reckon honestly with the work still to be done. It is also an opportunity to honour the subtle, often invisible ways women have safeguarded their families, especially when formal structures failed them. For generations, mothers have built legacy not only through stories and sacrifice, but through the careful keeping of tangible things: gold tucked away for an uncertain future, earrings saved for a daughter’s new beginning, a simple ring that could be sold or held depending on what life required.

As we look ahead, we remain in awe of Mother Earth — for the metals and gemstones that make our craft possible, and for the quiet, enduring wealth they represent in women’s lives. Jewelry will always be an expression of beauty, but it is also a vessel of resilience. In every heirloom passed from hand to hand, there is a reminder that women’s economic stories did not begin with bank accounts or balance sheets. They began with what the earth offered, what women held close, and what they chose to pass on.

This International Women’s Day, we honour that legacy — and all the women who continue to turn the riches of the earth into protection, possibility, and love for generations that follow.