Crowded kitchens: the ‘democratisation’ of domesticity?

Abstract

Building on previous work concerning the gendered nature of domestic space, this paper focuses on the kitchen as a key site in which gendered roles and responsibilities are experienced and contested. As men have begun to engage more frequently in cooking and other domestic practices (albeit selectively and often on their own terms), the paper argues that kitchens have become 'crowded' spaces for women. Drawing on evidence from focus groups, interviews and ethnographic observation of kitchen practices in South Yorkshire (UK), we suggest that men's entry into the kitchen has facilitated the expression of a more diverse range of masculine subjectivities, while also creating new anxieties for women.Specifically, our evidence suggests that family meals may be experienced as a site of domestic conflict as well as a celebration of family life; that convenience and shortcuts can be embraced by women without incurring feelings of guilt and imperfection; that cooking is being embraced as a lifestyle choice by increasing numbers of men who use it as an opportunity to demonstrate competence and skill, while women are more pragmatic; ; and that kitchens may be experienced as 'uncanny' spaces by women as men increasingly assert their presence in this domain. Our analysis confirms that while the relationship between domestic practices and gendered subjectivities is changing, this does not amount to a fundamental 'democratisation' of domesticity with significantly greater equality between men and women.

Extending the Contested Spaces of the Modern Kitchen

“…While some items might, for example, enable their users to achieve ‘better’ or faster results in terms of cooking and cleaning ( cf . Meah and Jackson ; Meah under review), evidence from Hand and colleagues' () study of kitchens (and bathrooms) indicates that material items are also implicated in the performance – or doing – of ‘family’, which is particularly significant within the current conceptualisation of kitchen as a space for living, an idea embraced in a kitchen manufacturer's advertisement published in Good Housekeeping in 2002, where the kitchen is described as ‘ somewhere you want to spend time, where you feel comfortable, where you can simply live your life ’ (Hand et al . , 675).…”

Re-imagining the kitchen as a site of memory

“…18. sutton's work on the Greek island of kalymnos is a notable exception. 19. others have included food safety (Meah, 2014c), gender and cooking, (Meah & Jackson, 2013), food waste , consumer ethics , materialisng domestic consumption (Meah, Under review) and a challenge to discourses of decline in relation to domestic cooking (Meah & Watson, 2011). 20. see Jackson (1999), Misztal (2003), steedman (1986), and Zerubavel (1996.…”

Familial fictions: families and food, convenience and care

“…2 It provides a humorous commentary on men s changing domestic roles and the contested spaces of the contemporary kitchen (see Meah & Jackson 2013) and an alternative to the conventional view that cooking is a serious business, requiring discipline and skills that many find intimidating.…”