Current research shows two oversights regarding female cultural subjectivity in rural change: it overlooks the role of intangible cultural heritage in reshaping gender roles. It fails to examine women’s governance in overcoming the “family-market” divide. This paper examines the Dai textile craftsmanship in Mang Village, Yunnan, China, employing a case study approach to develop a “cultural aggregation- subject activation” framework to elucidate the interactive dynamics between rural revitalization and women’s development. The findings of this study indicate the following: First, textile techniques reconstruct cultural space through the triad of material production, ritual performance, and pattern narration, encouraging women to evolve from “family producers” to “cultural meaning creators,” thereby reinterpreting ethnic memory through symbolic engagement. Second, women leverage traditional mutual aid networks to engage in rural governance, transforming “domestic” labor into organizational and coordination skills, thereby exhibiting distinctive community mobilization in the development of cultural spaces and the planning of folk activities, culminating in a capacity progression from “skill inheritors” to “cultural operators.” Third, the industrialization of handicrafts yields combined benefits in terms of economic empowerment, cultural continuity, and community solidarity. Women employ flexible production models to harmonize family responsibilities with public participation, which not only mitigates the effects of industrialization on rural regions but also reconciles the divide between tradition and modernity through the role of cultural intermediaries, fostering a symbiotic structure of “policy-culture” dual empowerment. This research demonstrates how rural women convert local knowledge into revitalization impetus by activating cultural subjectivity, offering theoretical and practical pathways for reconstructing an inclusive governance framework.

 

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