How My Feminist Awakening Started In The Kitchen

Food is a very important part of our community, as humans and as Africans. Sometimes, a culture’s approach to food will tell you more about them than anything else will.

In the time before globalisation, finding and making food for the family was a communal effort. Men went out hunting and farmed labour-intensive crops like yams while women were the gatherers and gardeners tasked with the primary responsibility of childcare. This arrangement worked because life then was filled with a lot of uncertainty. Men travelled long distances to hunt, farm and go to war and stood the risk of never making it back home.

Women were tasked with keeping the homestead and holding down the fort while their men were gone. Expectedly,  they passed these expectations on to their female children who had to stay close to home while the boys were allowed more freedom.

Now, times have changed drastically with a paradigm shift in what used to be the social code in our communities. Women have fought for the right to earn and contribute towards finances in their homes. Even as the world evolves towards a more equalist ideology, society still upholds antiquated expectations of women. 

My personal experience in the kitchen was an early eye-opener into this unfair bias. As the eldest sibling, I was expected by default to handle the major responsibility of fending for my brothers. Apart from chasing after them, those responsibilities included making their meals - something many girls can relate to.

For a precocious growing girl who would rather read books or watch football, it seemed like such an unreasonable expectation, but it was not illogical. After all, I was the eldest. 

It took some time for me to adjust to the new duties but cooking soon became a pleasure. The more I learned, the more responsibility I was allowed to take in the kitchen until it became my sole responsibility.

However, as my siblings grew to be more independent, the chores evolved to become gendered. I would be stuck in the kitchen, sweating and prepping meals while the boys played. In my young mind, it was the height of unfairness, and I started to resent all the hours I spent in the kitchen.

There’s no joy in doing something you are competent at if it comes from a place of anger. The few times I rebelled, I was reminded of my place as a woman in the kitchen, that no matter how high a woman rises, her sole duty remains catering to the men in her life.

My rebellion soon shifted from protesting the inequality to becoming aware of ”  real-life consequences of gender roles I began to understand how marginalization affects women everywhere, in all spheres of our lives. It is angering because conversations like this are minimised and considered unimportant when compared to other gender-based issues like sexual violence and employment bias. 

Cooking is “not a big deal” to many men, but that’s only because society has reinforced that they don’t have to do it.

It took moving away from home to reclaim my love for food and trying out new recipes. Nothing can ever compare to having the freedom to choose when and what to eat, but I am aware that this is a luxury that many married women aren’t afforded.

This is not theoretical - statistical evidence shows that women are doing the bulk of unpaid work in their families. This survey is one of many that show that on an average, women do twice as much work as the men they’re partnered with - and even more when they have children. The bulk of that work is in preparing and cooking meals for their families.

I love cooking, and I love feeding people and entertaining, but this is only because I have chosen to do it on my own terms which is a feminist stance if you ask me I find it empowering when I cook my meals, not out of duty, but out of love for myself. But this should not apply to all women. 

My parents pride themselves on being fair and open-minded, but they are a product of their generation. It has taken me a while to come to terms with this, even as I’ve noticed changes in how they approach gendered chores.

My brothers are now grown men, who have chosen to unlearn the bias they grew up with and learned to cook too - with encouragement from me. It seems like such a big deal, but it should not be. Cooking is a life skill that every adult who chooses to have should have, and that’s the hill I'm prepared to die on.