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< p style = "text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" > We love food , we hate having to cook it < / p >
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There is a < span style = 'border-bottom: 2px black dashed;' v-b-popover.click.html="theory_of_evolution" title = "Theory of evolution " > theory of evolution < / span > that says the following : the development of the Homo Sapiens brain happened
mainly due to the discovery of fire , and subsequently cooking . By using less energy to hunt , and spending less time chewing raw food , the human brain had increasingly more space and time to develop new activities , ponder upon its surroundings
and grow in size ( Wranghart , 2009 ) . Throughout the years , cooking has maintained its crucial role worldwide , as a fundamental part of culture and society , but also as a way to make food safer to eat and easier to preserve . Cooking
also represented a catalyst for humans to become social beings , which became more civilized and introspective while sitting around the cooking fire ( Pollan , 2014 ) . But while everybody benefited from the positive aspects of cooked food ,
the labour associated with it became a task reserved only for some .
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Women have been pushed towards domestic work ever since the evolution from more equal hunter - gatherer societies to settled agricultural societies ( Smith , 1997 ) . Traditionally , men provided the food , earned at first by hunting , and later on through their
paid job . Women would be in charge of preparing food for everyone , and that role rarely changed . Throughout time , cooking as a means of caregiving became a practice identified more with women , while cooking for entertainment or skill
display was , and still is , associated with men ( Cairns et al . 2010 ) . In many households it is still often considered a special occasion when < span style = 'border-bottom: 2px black dashed;' v-b-popover.click.html="man_cooking" title = "The cooking man" > the man of the house cooks < / span > . This view was reinforced in cooking advice from the 20 th century ;
men do not cook on a daily basis , but when they do , they cook dishes that best display their talents ( Vester , 2015 ) .
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Discussing the gender politics of cooking , Pollan wonders : “ Was home cooking denigrated because the work was mostly done by women , or did women get stuck doing most of the cooking because our culture denigrated the work ? ” ( Pollan , 2014 ) . Men often had
a privileged position when it comes to their cooking practice - mostly with meat , outdoors , seen as entertainment , while women ’ s cooking happened behind closed kitchen doors . Today , most of the world - renowned chefs , the ones who win
countless awards and get their own TV shows are men .
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However , the more time we spend watching chefs cook meals we ’ ll never get to eat , the less time we spend cooking for ourselves . In the past decades , studies have shown that cooking time has declined ( Pollan , 2014 ; Ferdman , 2015 ) . Less cooking in the average
household means , one the one side , less housework reserved for women . It also means that corporations make great profits from providing the food we eat on a daily basis , which comes with several downfalls . Food made by a corporation
has many more chemical ingredients , that people very rarely use in their kitchens ( Pollan , 2014 ) . Eating packaged foods has increased the distance between what raw ingredients are and where they come from , and the food we actually
consume . “ Food becomes just another commodity , an abstraction . And as soon as that happens we become easy prey for corporations selling synthetic versions of the real thing - what I call edible foodlike substances . ” ( Pollan , 2014 ) .
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The phrase < span style = 'border-bottom: 2px black dashed;' v-b-popover.click.html="woman_place" title = "A woman's place" > a woman ’ s place is in the kitchen < / span > , or the home , has been traced back as far as Ancient Greece ’ s Aeschylus . Since then , it has been restated and reinterpreted throughout history , in literature , art , and politics ( Popik , 2013 ) . We can see an
example of this belief in < span style = 'border-bottom: 2px black dashed;' v-b-popover.click.html="leave_it" title = "Leave it to the Beaver" > a clip from Leave it to Beaver < / span > , a popular 50 s American sitcom . In it , the father explains to a confused son why he ’ s more suited to do all the grilling outdoors , while his mother works inside the kitchen .
“ A woman ’ s place is in the home , and as long she ’ s in the home , she might as well be in the kitchen . Women do alright when they have all the modern conveniences , but us men are better at this rugged type of outdoor cooking . Sort of
a throwback to cavemen days . ” ( Leave it to Beaver , 1957 ) . His last remark reinforces the idea that gender roles have an evolutionary development , are part of human nature and should not be questioned .
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A brilliant example of the portrayal of women in the kitchen , from a woman ’ s perspective , is < span style = 'border-bottom: 2px black dashed;' v-b-popover.click.html="martha_rosler" title = "Martha Rosler" > Martha Rosler ’ s Semiotics of the Kitchen < / span > . In this performance piece , set in a typical kitchen , Martha Rosler manipulates kitchen tools with sudden , violent gestures ,
sometimes even performing useless tasks such as pretending to throw the contents of a spoon over her shoulder . Her piece is meant to express the frustration of women being stuck doing domestic labour , which is taken for granted .
It is also a parody of the cooking shows of the time , particularly the one hosted by an always cheerful Julia Child . In her mock culinary show , she is no longer a cheerful performer , but uses the tools that have been assigned to
her as an expression of anger and frustration : “ when the woman speaks , she names her own oppression ” ( Rosler , 1975 ) . Her piece shows that gender roles enforced traditionally within the household can be oppressive , especially when
the labour of women is devalued and regarded as trivial .
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As both men and women have been finding their place within the workforce , sharing the workload within the home has increased slightly . However , even in homes where both partners work full - time , the majority of chores and administrative tasks still fall
on the woman ’ s shoulders , either mentally , or in practice . The extra workload that consists of planning and organisation and leads to the execution of the tasks has been coined by feminists as < span style = 'border-bottom: 2px black dashed;' v-b-popover.click.html="mental_load" title = "The mental load" > the mental load < / span > ( Emma , 2017 ) . Household
management is yet another invisible task done by women , a time - consuming work nonetheless , which adds up to the time already spent doing house chores .
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Today , technology corporations provide more options . Rather than sharing the work equally , both the mental load and the actual chores can be automated , to some extent , through technological solutions . No longer framed explicitly as women ’ s work , but continuing
to be ( de ) valued as such , tasks such as cooking can be facilitated through various apps . From a tool of oppression directed at women , food becomes a task delegated to gig workers by startups and other corporations . Regarding food
as a tool of oppression has opened the way for many solutions , some more realistic than others . The automation of food and cooking has been a recurrent topic of conversation and space for imagination both within social movements ,
and in popular culture . < / p >
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export default {
name : 'CookingCard' ,
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return {
theory _of _evolution : '<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cooking-up-bigger-brains/?redirect=1"> A theory developed by Richard Wrangham, biological anthropologist at Harvard University</a>' ,
woman _place : '<a href="https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/a_womans_place_is_in_the_kitchen/"> The origins of the phrase </a>' ,
leave _it : '<iframe width="200" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MXhlTQJcgbc" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>' ,
mental _load : '<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e916cc0a952d793c9f82dcd6954afcac63d68c87/0_0_2000_2000/master/2000.png?width=1920&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=a2b1fc7a0500118c9bf17bc660b566b9"></iframe>' ,
martha _rosler : '<img width="300" height="200" src="./media/topics/gender_in_food/images/martha.jpg"></img>' ,
man _cooking : '<iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/Wordtoth1955" width="200" height="2000" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>'
}
} ,
}
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