I know of several women who wake up before dawn every day, to make breakfast and packed lunch for family members attending school and office. They continue to prepare the same (fresh and hot) for those who stay at home, then snacks for the evening followed by dinner. Add to it, tea and coffee multiple times in a day, extra meals and snacks for guests, special cooking for parties, festivals and religious events.
Serving and eating in a family, the ancillary work around food preparation, is no less. Chopping, cutting, grating, grinding and other meal preparations, setting the table and serving everyone, cleaning and washing, storing the leftovers… Then there’s grocery, vegetable and fruits shopping, keeping a tab on its usage. Add to it individual concerns and preferences like vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals, food allergies, likes and dislikes of family members, needs of sick family members, infants and elderly. And don’ forget the overall requirements of nutrition and hygiene.
These women are among millions who bear the burden of feeding their families day in and day out, spanning almost their entire lives – as daughters, wives, daughters-in-law, mothers. They are among our grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, domestic helps and also some of us.
And there are those women whose lives are even harder, who collect fuel and water for cooking, also earn their family’s food when there’s no other earning member. They gather food, cook and clean without any external help or cooking appliances and tools to help them with.
I am among the privileged few who has a cook to help with the daily cooking. And yet I get bogged down with the daily drudgery of planning four meals a day, grocery and vegetable/fruit shopping and the daily monitoring of food consumption in the pantry and the refrigerator. I am tired of packing lunch boxes, feeding all members on time, remembering each family members’ likes, dislikes and favourite food, keeping the kitchen and kitchen gadgets clean and operational. And also internalising and bearing the burden of guilt of not always preparing what my children and husband love to eat or failing to cook a delicious meal.
My children are foodies but not always fussy, my husband rarely complains about food, as long as there is food! We have the privilege of ordering food from our favourite place when the cook is on leave or when I don’t feel like cooking. I am lucky! For there are many women who are hit or reprimanded for badly cooked food or an insufficient meal; Who eat the last and sometimes leftovers; Who are forbidden to enter the kitchen without taking a bath or prevented from touching certain items during their menstruation.
But then yes, all eyes are on me when it’s discovered that the bottle of tomato ketchup has gotten over, when there’s no egg for breakfast or when the chicken pieces in the biriyani are not enough for all. It’s me my family turns to when there’s a special soup or khichdi to be prepared for someone sick and medicines to be given after food. It’s me that my children look at to express their ire when the lunch is insipid or the packed tiffin is not up to their choice. It’s me or other women in the family taht the men and children question when there is a delay in preparing and serving meals.
The gendered nature of food practices in Indian homes, and elsewhere too, often stems from the socio-cultural construction of gender roles and responsibilities that assigns the liability of feeding the family to women. Food-related practices are an important part of our daily life and culture. And the primary preserver of this aspect of our culture are also women. So much so that women are always accused of abandoning their age-old traditions when they fail to cook a traditional food item. A woman’s identity has always been linked to her proficiency as a good cook and her ability to feed her family and others seamlessly. Their life is consumed by the complex, time consuming and often laborious act of cooking and feeding the family.
Gender roles coupled with religious and cultural practices have strongly established the construct of food liability as a woman’s sole responsibility. A woman who does not know how to cook is no woman. Even today, one of the key expectations of a prospective marital alliance is the future wife’s ability to cook. Men marry women in the expectation (which soon turns into a demand) that they will now have a permanent person cooking and cleaning for them.
Biwi and Maa ke haath ka khana has been eulogised by popular culture since time immemorial and is hailed as one of the hallmarks of being a ‘good’ wife and a mother. Providing good and nutritious food is central to the idea of good mothering and if women fail to live up to this requirement, they are chastised for failing at motherhood too. Mothers find pleasure in giving up and keeping aside food for their children.
Women are hailed as ‘Annapurna,’ the bestower of food and nourishment, akin to Goddess Annapurna. As mothers, wives and daughters, they are assigned with the duty of feeding the family and hence viewed as responsible for stalling hunger in the family. But in doing so, how many women suffer hunger pangs themselves? In many homes even today, the lion’s share of the food is kept aside for men in the family and women eat last after all the male members and children have been fed.
Women from marginalised sections are often left with no food after the family has eaten. And it’s women who are generally the first to sacrifice their food, to protect the food consumption of their families during a crisis. Where women do not have access to cooking gas connection or stoves, they trek for firewood and water, prepare food, washes utensils day after day. Continuous physical burden, improper postures, and little rest affect their health adversely.
Women cook against all odds — even when they are tired, sick, or in extreme difficulty due to impoverishment. Even to the extent of borrowing and begging food for their children and family members.
In addition, the responsibility of fulfilling nutritional requirements of a family also largely falls on women. The often glorified nutritious, home-cooked meals extolled by many is another duty that women are expected to fulfil, though working women and women from disadvantaged sections struggle to do so.
Many times, food is the cause of tensions, conflicts and even violence in several homes. Women are subject to mental and physical violence for delay in serving meals, food being not tasty or hot enough. So much so that some women even justify their husbands’ anger against tasteless food or delay because as breadwinners they deserve good, timely food. They often compromise to avoid disagreements and conflicts and comply with the social norms on their roles as and also try to propagate the same.
Ironically, though women are responsible for cooking and serving food, they do not have the freedom to negotiate and influence decisions around food procurement practices. The social and religious norms around food are often meant for women than men. Social norms dictate them to restrict their diets on certain days of the week and keep fasts. However, it’s the woman who is expected to cook for the entire family even if she is without food during fasts.
So while it’s the primary responsibility of women to cook, feed and manage the ‘kitchen department,’ men are considered to be elephants in the kitchen. Some men are even indulged with comments from their mothers and wives that their sons and husbands do not even know how to boil eggs or make tea! While women are constant fixtures in the kitchen and blend into the background, it’s an occasion to celebrate when some men step into the kitchen to cook. Women are supposed to be either obliged or encouraging in such endeavours.
Sadly, many women even if they hate the drudgery, are deeply conditioned to consider cooking and feeding as their primary responsibility and wear it as a badge of righteousness and honour. Some feel utterly jobless when they are asked to take a break from cooking, having done this job throughout their lives. Even if they hate the toil and the time consumed, women believe that cooking and feeding is the only way to keep the family healthy and happy, not even hiring help even when they can afford it.
According to a survey by Gemini Cooking Oils, around 75% of women in Maharashtra had only 30 minutes a day to follow their passion. It revealed that 6 in every 10 women in the state would like to save time spent on cooking and engage more in their interests and passion. According to the survey, 80% of women do most of the cooking for their household themselves, as it is considered healthier and due to absence of any support.
No doubt cooking can be a pleasure, a hobby, a stressbuster for many women. But name one woman who has not been depleted by this drudgery and the sheer mental and physical exhaustion of preparing food multiple times a day. And worse, women are hardly acknowledged or appreciated for their contribution and unpaid labour. Yes, everybody loves a scrumptious meal and don’t hesitate complimenting the women who have prepared it. But it ends mostly at that.
It’s time women reclaim their time and energy in the face of these seemingly endless food preparing and feeding responsibilities. Working towards breaking this deep gender bias and changing the narrative of ‘feeding the family’, as only the woman’s responsibility is the first step towards it.
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