Cooking a Roast & Fixing the Dishwasher
By Ashley Preston
Experience with Gendered TasksWhenever my family celebrates a special occasion, an elaborate meal is prepared by the women of the household. The women responsible for dinner shop for the groceries, prepare the meal, set the table, and pay attention to minute details such as ensuring the margarine is in a glass dish. Even amidst the labour of cooking, the women in my family still manage to “freshen up” for the evening. In comparison, most of the men in my family work in the masculine industry of construction which encourages them to repair household items. Recently, our dishwasher has left food residue on plates and glasses, forcing my family to hand wash, or run items through a cycle again. Traditionally, my father, grandpa, or papa would navigate, or attempt to, troubleshoot the issues with the dishwasher. Therefore, I chose to cook a roast beef dinner and fix the dishwasher for my gendered tasks.
To cook dinner for my family, I went to the grocery store and picked out the meat, vegetables, and fresh rolls. When I got home, I made sure to “freshen up” by putting on a dress. Around two in the afternoon, I began preparing the roast with oil, spices, onions, and a beef gravy mix into the roast pan. Like my grandma, I prepared my carrots, green beans, and potatoes by washing, peeling, and cutting the vegetables, then putting them into pots of water. Closer to three o’clock, I put the roast in the oven for two hours, set the table, and then cooked the rest of the meal around five o’clock. Overall, the entire process, including eating the dinner, took me approximately four hours.
To maintain a historical perspective when cooking, I did not turn to Google or YouTube to guide me through the process; instead, I asked my mother questions beforehand to ensure I knew how to cook the roast and make gravy. As cooking took an extremely long time, I was quite tired, and to be honest, I was annoyed when my family came home because they kept asking me: “When is dinner ready?” Nevertheless, as this meal was the first roast I had ever cooked, it was quite delicious, according to my family, even though my potatoes were not mashed enough!
In a t-shirt and jeans, I first removed the bottom rack of the dishwasher, and then fiddled around with the latches on the top rack. I found dried food, soap, and, oddly, paper towel hidden above the top propeller. By using my father’s “cleaning concoction” (vinegar and water), I was able to remove the buildup above the top propeller area. Then, I grabbed some tools from my father’s toolbox to remove the contraption at the bottom of the dishwasher. It took me a while to find the correct screwdriver, but finally, I began unscrewing all the screws until the contraption at the bottom of the dishwasher came out. In my discovery, I found more dried food and paper towels, which I removed. Then, based on my memory, I put the dishwasher back together. Without using the internet and only asking my father a few questions, the process of fixing the dishwasher was based almost entirely on guessing. My fix worked. Overall, it only took me an hour and a half. However, throughout the process, I was uncomfortable from the back pain that occurred with constantly bending over. As well, it was challenging to find the correct tools to remove parts of the dishwasher. Also, I was quite worried that I would not put the dishwasher back together properly. Nevertheless, in fixing the dishwasher, I felt an extreme sense of pride and strength – I had become “manly” enough to fix a household appliance.
Analysis
In a historical context, cooking and fixing household appliances have been gendered in the family to align with feminine or masculine responsibilities. Gendering tasks or jobs within family dynamics are identified in scholarship: masculine tasks “involve physical work with objects, including outdoor labor and home fixes and maintenance,” whereas feminine tasks are “associated with food preparation, family scheduling and organizing, and home aesthetics.” Therefore, the responsibility of labour is based on the social construction of defined gender roles.
The Feminine Kitchen
As gender roles have associated cooking for the family with femininity, the location of this task is confined to the parameters of the kitchen. In Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender, and Race, Sherrie Inness argues that there are “various discourses about food, cooking, and gender roles that stem from the kitchen but that pervade our society.” With the separation of the private and public sphere during the Victorian Age, a woman was considered to belong within the home. In the private sphere, women were responsible for domestic duties where learning to cook meals, being a proper homemaker, and becoming the ideal wife was necessary. Through the relationship between femininity and the family, cooking is labeled as a nurturing instinct; however, domestic labour is unpaid. Within the private sphere, cooking has no financial incentives; therefore, from a masculine perspective of the public sphere, it is of little value. Therefore, the notion “a woman’s place is in the kitchen” reinforces women with second-class status.
Feminine gender roles are further reinforced through consumerism and technology. In the post-war era, consumerism revolved around the family and specifically targeted the role of women. In particular, Betty Crocker, an infamous, yet fictional character, reinforces the feminine gender roles associated with cooking in the private sphere. In 1991, General Mills created the 40th Anniversary Edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, in which they recalled the heritage of Betty Crocker:
She was created in 1921 by the Washburn-Crosby Flour Co., which later became General Mills. The executives at Washburn-Crosby felt that a women’s signature should be used when answering requests for baking and cooking information. Betty was selected for its friendly sound, and Crocker was the last name of a well-liked director – William G. Crocker. A contest for the most distinctive Betty Crocker signature was held among the female employees of Washburn-Crosby, and the signature remains very much the same today… In one survey at that time, Betty Crocker was voted one of America’s best-known women, second only to Eleanor Roosevelt!
Television programs, cookbooks, magazines, and other forms of consumerism shaped and advised women on their role in personal and family matters. Women like Betty Crocker, Julia Childs, and Kate Aitkens were personified as ideal, feminine women revolving their livelihood around the kitchen.
Furthermore, technological advancements “reveal[ed] the possibilities of finding such pleasures in domestic work, pleasures that exist[ed] alongside the drive toward efficiency.” The nineteenth and twentieth century brought advancements to kitchen appliances like the electric refrigerator, eggbeater, and cheese grater which “proved useful in reducing the time to prepare meals.” Technological advancements were utilized through consumerism to attract women: a necessity of the home and it would make life “easier” in the kitchen. Nevertheless, cooking remained a laborious task for women from grocery shopping to clean-up. Certain technological advancements, such as processed food, made more work for women in the kitchen. In their article, “The Way to a Man’s Heart,” Neuhaus Jessamyn comments that:
Women were expected to ‘be creative’ with processed foods. Serving your family food straight from the can or the package seemed to indicate an unwomanly interest in providing for your family; hence a proliferation of recipes which ‘doctored up’ processed foods and which required additional kitchen work in order to serve the very foods that were supposed to be more convenient.
As cooking was “a vehicle for women’s self-expression and agency,” women were expected to set the table in a feminine way, decorate their home, have current furniture, and wear the proper attire. The private sphere was classified as the women’s space.
The relationship between food and femininity is conveyed by society and within the family through tradition and ritual. Common twenty-first-century resources such as YouTube or Google are relatively new avenues to learn to cook compared to the oral tradition of teaching the next generation. Traditionally, women would orally instruct their female children how to prepare meals or deserts. However, these traditions reinforced that cooking is a feminine responsibility – the work of women passed from one generation of women to another generation of women. Sherrie Inness comments on the relationship between femininity and cooking: “[it] passes down lessons about gender roles at the same time it conveys lessons about how to prepare yeast rolls.”
Even though I did not use a cookbook for my task, I knew that my mother and both my grandmothers have cookbooks that they will refer to occasionally. Out of curiosity, I went through the cookbooks in my household and found the names of my female relatives located on the first page. The cookbooks were passed down from generations prior: grandmothers and great-grandmothers. As well, in my family, it is a tradition to provide family favourite recipes to the female children of the household. In preparation for my task, my mother commented on special techniques that would better my meal. For example, the women in my family believe putting a carrot in the roast pan while it is cooking will make the gravy taste better. I have learned from cooking that my family frequently aligns with how gender roles and cooking are presented in scholarship and throughout history.
“I Need a Man to Fix This!”
When a household appliance breaks, there is a social construction of masculinity that it is a man’s responsibility to solve the problem, first based on patriarchy. In Marriage, A History, Stephine Coontz writes that the “ideal” middle-class man in the 1950s “specialized in the practical, individualistic activities needed for subsistence.” Within these 1950s single breadwinner middle-class families, patriarchy ensued the household. The value of repairing household appliances or items derived from an asserted masculine control and headship within the household. Furthermore, within the context of the “traditional” middle-class family, men would pass on the skills of repairing items in the household to their sons because it defined the meaning of “being a man” or manhood.
Furthermore, there is a connection between masculinity and the role of attempting the task by one’s self. During the Great Depression, household repairs needed to be fixed by homeowners as money was limited to hire a professional or replace broken or worn-out household items. Therefore, with the rise of the Do-It-Yourself method, an economic incentive was correlated to household fixes and repairs. After the Great Depression and the Second World War, the 1950s brought about a single breadwinner middle-class family. The male breadwinner reinforced the notion of the public sphere, where they brought home the financial necessity for the family. Even though it became financially feasible for families to hire a professional to fix household items, there was an economic value associated with a man completing the task. In this way, Steven Gelber writes: “when husbands alone took over household jobs that had been previously done by professionals, like exterior painting or household building projects…they were carving out a gender-specific role within the house. Such activities were exclusively male and doing them gave men a sense of special ability.” Therefore, when a task is associated with economic value, it becomes masculinized. Steven Gelber explains the relationship between masculinity and economic value: “if not by the homeowner, then by a paid professional.” The tasks associated with household repairs are based on professions from the public sphere; thus, from this derivative, household maintenance becomes a man’s job.
During the experience of fixing my dishwasher, I used the Do-It-Yourself method. Throughout the process, I was consciously aware of the economic benefit and cost associated with fixing the dishwasher. On one hand, I was saving my family money by repairing the dishwasher; however, I was cautious that a mishap would lead to hiring a professional, thus costing money, and creating an upset father.
The Changes in Gendering Tasks
Although cooking is gendered as a feminine task, men are predominately chefs in the modern world. When the kitchen is in the public sphere – a restaurant or professional setting – the notion of masculinity, hierarchy, and patriarchy are established in the realm of the food industry. Even though most of the tasks associated with household cooking and chef work are identical, the profession of a chef “is considered productive because it is paid for.” In the private sphere, cooking is of little value in society, in general, because it is an expectation of women to perform this responsibility. Nevertheless, once cooking is moved into the public sphere cooking becomes a job of economic and professional value; therefore, it is deemed more masculine.
With women in the workforce, trades (such as electrical or construction) have noticed an increase in women despite the masculine stigma surrounding these jobs. According to “Women are Making Inroads in the Trades but Still Have a Ways to Go” by Brandie Weikle, “4% of people employed [in Canada] in the trades are women.” Even though men continue to dominate trades, the gendering of tasks associated with household repairs has changed over time, even in minute ways. Furthermore, with the rise of technological platforms such as YouTube, people have the option of learning handiwork on their own time, regardless of feminine or masculine roles.
Conclusion
Ultimately, tasks or jobs that are gendered feminine or masculine arise from the constructs that society asserts. From my experiences in gendered tasks, I recognize that gender roles perpetuate limitations in our society. For my grandparents, and even my parents, gender roles continue to format their livelihood and home based on how society functioned in the twentieth century. However, in the twenty-first century, there is a greater acceptance for overlap of the private and public spheres. Therefore, one can only wonder how life will look in the generations to come.
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