A New Discourse on the Kitchen: Feminism and Environmental Education

Abstract

Popularised feminist discourse has devalued daily cooking and implicitly defined it as work that reinforces women's second-class status. In an era of climate change linked to industrialised foods and disease epidemics caused by the modern Western diet, kitchen work has acquired political importance. Daily cooking must be understood as public, as well as private. Neither feminist theorists nor environmental educators have integrated cooking in the kitchen, specifically, into discourse. By examining two local foods activist groups, we measure one site where feminists value cooking, and we develop a feminist theory of gender-inclusivity. Based on our survey, feminists who cook with local foods are only beginning to ideologically integrate feminism and sustainable foods cooking; however, we argue that in practice, the connection is strong and that it is time to conceptualise a new discourse on the kitchen for a feminist-environmental theory of cooking.

Kitchen phenomenologies: Antiromantic poetics of space and food in the Anthropocene

“…The inside is equated with the feminine and with unpaid domestic labours of care, like cooking. The outside is seen as the romantic world of men, power, politics, and profit (Bachelard, 2014; Counihan, 2012; Salleh, 1995; Stovall et al, 2015), or as Tuan puts it: ‘The world is romantic as the home is not. Men are romantic as women are not’ (Tuan, 2013, p. 23).…”

“…These rituals speak of the secrecy and intimacy of the kitchen, where women labour. This everyday work has been discounted and invisiblised by capitalist patriarchy, and even by second‐wave feminisms which inadvertently disregarded women's domestic labours by focusing on the public sphere (Stovall et al, 2015; Tuan, 2013).…”

Gender Gap in Food Security and Nutrition: Special Case of India in the G20

“…However, the food security of the female population is of concern in India and in many developing nations where the household environment is patriarchal. This is evident from several studies that draw close connections between food and patriarchy (Shiva, 2009;Stovall et al, 2015). In most societies, women represent the transition from raw to cooked food or nature to culture including arranging water and fuel in some existing traditional pockets.…”

Every rose has its thorns: Domesticity and care beyond the dyad in ECEC

“…Domesticity is devalued in society (Stovall et al, 2015) and women have been keen to disassociate their work in ECEC with domesticity and mothering (Ailwood, 2008; Aslanian, 2015). The Collins dictionary describes domestic life as “Domestic duties and activities are concerned with the running of a home and family.” All that is done to run a household is, from a care-ethics perspective, a process of caring.…”