Yasmin Soni
From childhood, I can recall sitting in the kitchen with my mother, asking me to taste her dishes and give a thumbs up. Young as I was, I wondered why my mother could not eat what she cooked herself. Eventually, it occurred to me that certain foods were forbidden for her due to religious or cultural reasons while being consumed by my dad.
In my home, which I eventually recognized as having been a toxic patriarchal environment, I watched my mom succumb to the pressure of making meals from my father’s side of the family. If the food did not meet his expectations, it would lead to an unhappy man. All major decisions about food were made by our patriarch, around whose whims the rest adapted themselves for meals. The best portions always belonged to him alone. This tension within our household always left me wondering why cooking heritage is so gendered – the dual burden of cuisines across generations! Through this article, I explore the complex journey of unlearning and relearning culinary practices and examine how the intergenerational transmission of food knowledge profoundly shapes a woman’s self-identity, often casting her as the ‘other’ in her own story. Through semi-structured interviews and food recall conversations, this article is a product of a long interaction with my mother and many other women who self-reported as principal family cooks.
Gendered expectations of culinary heritage
“I started learning to cook when I was about ten. My mother, who learned from her mother, taught me everything. Our kitchen was always a bustling place, cooking was a communal activity among the women. Men helped occasionally, but they often stayed out of the kitchen. My mother often reminded me that mastering these skills would be crucial when I get married,” explained Sarita, primarily employed as house-help.
Cooking has something to do with food preparation, but as an art, it is an embodied practice with heavy historical content, tradition, and cultural identity. According to Nestle and Sceats, culinary memory entails the preservation of recipes, techniques, and tastes from generation to generation. Such transmission is often gendered, with women traditionally responsible for its preservation and teaching.
For many women, learning to cook started in early childhood, taught by mothers or grandmothers. The process is about learning practical skills and absorbing cultural values and family traditions. These recipes and methods passed down from generation to generation become part of a culinary identity, relating one to his or her heritage and family history. Food has a complex, multilayered social construction that is becoming increasingly multicultural. According to Peter Farb and George Armelagos, “Eating is so basic to the human condition that it is for each of us a part of our being. It is a major sense of self-definition. The habits of eating are among the most conservative behavioural patterns.” As reported by Oleschuk, 2019, the identified schema from the research was “cooking by our mother’s side,” explaining how culinary knowledge is passed down through maternal teaching.
To further understand the gendered nature of knowledge transmission, I spoke to women who mentioned a similar schema wherein they traced the roots of their cooking skills to some strong female influence in their life. Many women reported they were made to do the same domestic cooking activities as their maternal figures, especially older daughters.
“My maternal grandmother was pulled out of the school when an elder daughter was required as a house help to mother. My mother, a younger daughter, didn’t face the same brutality to learn domestic cooking.” Explained Manisha, a school teacher.
Women reported that they felt these chores were part of what was expected from them to maintain maternal figures and to conform to the gender role expectations that were imposed on them (cooking is a ‘feminine’ task). Some respondents expressed anger from this retrospective viewpoint about the father and brother not doing enough housework and the mother and sister doing too much.
Unlearning and Relearning Culinary Practices
Through my interactions with women, a general trend came to the fore of abstinence from cooking after marriage. In a joint family setting, this abstinence can extend up to a year or so, wherein the bride is almost like an observer learning ways in her new household. This custom seems prevalent across cultures as a time of adjustment to her new culinary roles. This tradition reverberates with themes found in literature and feminist theories alike, standing as a metaphor for entry into a domestic life and gaining culinary skills. Simone de Beauvoir mentioned in her book “The Second Sex” that women have always been relegated to roles that reinforce their secondary status. This transition period when they are learning to cook reiterates that identity and values associated with a woman are still tied with her ability to conform to her new family’s expectations. Similarly, in “The Feminine Mystique,” Betty Friedan investigates women’s issues that have usually been reduced to the domestic sphere, whereby a woman’s self-esteem is measured by the maintenance of a household.
In a nuclear family setup, the culinary culture is mainly dominated by the woman acting as the primary cook in the house, learning how to cook based on what was passed down from her mother or another influential female figure. My mother’s cooking was heavily influenced by my father’s preferences. Over the years, she gradually abandoned her own culinary traditions and adjusted to my father’s taste. Sometimes, the instructions were oral, and at other times, she followed cooking shows and cookbooks to satisfy his palate. The nudges and coercion were so fine that often, she did not even realize the recipes she gave away. It was much later in life, when she began to reclaim her roots and identity, that she realized how many of her sacrifices were to meet patriarchal demands. This phenomenon reflects themes Adrienne Rich discusses in “Of Woman Born,” in which she talks about the place of women within family units, often submerging their identities to fulfill others’ needs and desires. Nancy Chodorow explores expectations thrust upon women in “The Reproduction of Mothering,” in which she argues that women’s identities are selected based on the expectations placed upon them for the service of their families.
Women in even non-toxic, male-income-dominant households report that they are coerced into adjusting to their husbands’ tastes at times at the expense of their own tastes. Such subtle coercion squares with Marilyn Frye’s view of the “oppression of women,” whereby societal norms and expectations subtly enforce the subordination and self-sacrifice of women.
These dynamics are further illustrated through literature and feminist theories, such as Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” where she argues that women need a physical and metaphorical space of their own to grow identities and creativity. This can be interpreted culinarily as being free from external pressures in the expression of one’s culinary heritage.
Such stories reveal how deep patriarchal influence is even within the domestic space; cooking is about very much more than the preparation of food for the sustenance of women. More similar to my mother’s instance, reclaiming the roots and identity around culinary habits sure becomes a very strong instance of affirming the self in the face of the very conventional forces of patriarchy.
This theme is also brought out in the recent film, “Laapataa Ladies.” A particular scene, set to the simple backdrop of a verandah outside a village kitchen, has a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law chatting amongst themselves:
Mother-in-law: “My mother used to make it just like that. She used to season it with onion and garlic, and I really loved it, but Deepak and his father don’t like it, so I stopped making it.”
Daughter-in-law: “But then, why? You like it anyway. Cook it for yourself.”
Mother-in-law: “Since when do women cook what they like eating? The trouble is, I don’t even remember what I used to like.”
In conclusion, the intricate web of culinary practices, expectations, and identities woven through generations reflects the profound impact of gendered norms on women’s lives. Estranged and shaped by such food politics, my daily life growing up in a multicultural family, I saw firsthand the relentless pressures on women—quite consistently situated within the kitchen, where culinary heritage becomes a site of both oppression and resistance. These gendered expectations structured daily life and deeply affected the women’s sense of self and identity.
The processes from unlearning to relearning the culinary practices that my mother and many other women experienced were adventures of resilience and adaptability across these gendered terrains. These stories I collected revealed a persistent double burden: women are supposed to uphold the culinary tradition of their family and also adapt to the requirements of the marital home. This dual expectation places women in an interesting, complex play of continuity and change where culinary identities are ceaselessly renegotiated and redefined. The stories the women share point out that the responsibility for domestic tasks will have to be more equally distributed among the skills of cultural and emotional labor.
Thus, gendered expectations of culinary heritage are not about food; they are a matter of power, identity, and resistance. Understanding and balancing such expectations could lead us toward more inclusive and equitable culinary practices, where identities and contributions are equally important among all members. In improving any disagreement in how we perceive and value culinary labor, this article aims to offer a more balanced appreciation of the cultural and personal significance of cooking in our lives, through women’s stories that give a view into these complex dynamics and improve how we perceive and value culinary labor in the domestic sphere.
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Yasmin Soni is a doctoral scholar at TISS and is passionate about gender justice and parity.
