Women Belong In The Kitchen And So Do Men, For Food Has No Gender

If the way to a man’s heart is his stomach, wouldn’t it be better if he learnt to cook too? Cooking really isn’t a gender specific job and it’s time we deal with it!

Whoever said that the way to a man’s heart is his stomach forgot to add that it’s not a woman’s job to cook! I mean, how can you make cooking a gender-specific job? It really makes me laugh.

To cook, you need the cooking ingredients, a stove, hands, your five senses, all the things a regular human being has, right? So where does the gender part come in? Or is it that these men lack any of the senses mentioned above? I think, not!

Now, irrespective of your gender, if you are reading this, you surely would know one working woman who cooks for her family. You know one housewife who is criticised for not being ‘up to the mark.’ Or one newly married bride whose husband fights with her everyday as she cannot cook. The one mother who doesn’t cook lip-smacking food like the others and what not! Has anyone thought of a way to their hearts?

Cooking is one of the so-called predominant feminine qualities.

Women’s hands are not just for cooking

Have you heard of the ‘L-Team’, with the letter ‘L’ standing for ‘Ladies?’ These are women performing critical maintenance procedures under train coaches to ensure the safety of train passengers.

That’s right an all-women team of railway employees in Kerala. The same hands you labelled ‘meant for cooking.’ This team of 14 women, led by a woman supervisor, is the only one in the country so far responsible for looking after the maintenance of train coaches. A job traditionally dominated by men!

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Why is it that women actually successfully multi-task? Men just ‘think’ they can’t. Dear men, the fact is that you are capable too! Yes, you. In fact, if you see, the best chefs in the world are men! You too are capable of spreading love in the same way.

Cooking is an art, it’s beauty!

Women don’t want to go on a nationwide strike, protesting and yelling that cooking is not their job. She is still happy to cook. What a woman dislikes is the sense of entitlement entrusted on them that it is their duty to do so. That’s the gap between the traditional and a modern way of life we talk about.

So many times, we have all heard about that man who keeps grumbling at his wife for not knowing to cook. Or about that man who is shamed for cooking and his wife ‘wearing the pants’ in the house! How often are women blamed for their mothers not ‘teaching’ them to cook!

Dear Mr. Anonymous, just like your mother, even the woman you married has a doting mother. Her mother too was worried about her education. Where do you think she could squeeze in the time to master a finger-licking recipe of kadhai paneer or a shahi biryani? Or even round and soft phulkas at that age? Are you just being a spoilt brat who says, “If I want it, I want it!”

Cooking is not ‘un-masculine.’ It’s an art. And it does not require chemistry. The joy definitely lies in cooking for others but everyone has a stomach and a heart, irrespective of the gender. Why not reach each other’s heart or even your own heart for that matter?

Be it a man or a woman, ‘cooking food’ has a pro and a con. Food is the ‘pro’ and ‘cooking’ is the con.

Picture credits: Still from series What The Folks

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