Beth (11), Laura, (22) and Joanna (23) are at home full-time. Their commitment to a primary role of caring and provisioning for their family is an integral part of the routines of family life, one which they undertake on a daily basis. However, as they also part share this work it involves a level of negotiation and is not exclusively their responsibility seven days a week. For some of them cooking is more enjoyable and pleasurable than other gendered household work that they carry out. It is connected to what they see as duties they took on that encompass a myriad of tasks and caring work.
Laura (22), an older mother, indentifies with the role of nurturer as her commitment to her husband and child. While her husband is willing to help out with cooking, her responsibility for feeding emerged from the early days of her relationship; one is which she took on willingly. Her husband’s lack of skill or interest in feeding himself, and her love of cooking, and taking care of others presented a positive outcome for her role;’ He struggled he said, he bought food like vegetables and fruit and then it would go off and then he lost heart… one of the greatest things for him was, that he doesn’t have to worry about that because I like cooking’
As a mother with a first baby she revels in the role she is involved in, finding in it a creative passion for nurturing. While she has taken a decision to be the one staying at home seeing it as a form of ‘submission’ she was assertive about how she considers it
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as two way process, and as ‘gender equal’ right for the immediate future but possibly changing when their circumstances are different;
‘I enjoy it because to me it is the other way of a creative process… I think that it is a form of submission but I also think it is a form of submission on my husband’s behalf to go working every day. And so he has my best interests at heart and I have his…, he serves me and I serve him and there is no, he knows that I will go working if I have to and if I can, and if I make that decision and I know he will cook if he has to and if we make the decision. So it is a submission that is voluntary and it is a serving that is willing, not a forced thing which would make me rebellious I think, yes, it would make me rebellious’,
However, others who work outside the home and also carry out household tasks including cooking see their commitment as more of a compromise and more complex than that of men.
Jill (7), who works part-time, points out in frustration that while she appreciates that her husband is always willing to cook, his is just a singular task whereas hers is more complex;
‘I think it’s very easy for men. They don’t have to multi-task. I mean he is just cooking… I mean I am here in the evenings and I’m thinking as I’m cooking. I am doing homework at the same time, the washing or the ironing; you are still doing a few other different things’
Identifying with the work associated with being female was not the experience of some other women. Contradictions are evident in how women think about what are important skills for males and females. For some when talking about the ability to cook as a life skill, a gendered bias is also displayed in favour of allocating roles. Beth (11) who worked full-time until the birth of her fourth child expressed little interest in household work or cooking but has taken on the role since finishing full- time employment. She stated that when she was young she had no interest in learning to cook or other tasks associated with the household, preferring to work outside on the
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family farm. She expressed little interest in or confidence when cooking. So despite her own disinterest and her husband’s willingness to prepare meals on a regular basis, she identifies cooking as a gendered skill for her daughters, but not her son, indicating the persistence of deep seated thinking regarding gender segregated work.
‘I was never interested in cooking and I was always an outdoor person really. I didn’t do cookery in school I picked a science subject…in recent years my husband has been my main influence really. I have learned more from him…which when I see my
daughter now and all she has done I do regret it…. I would love to have gone through a class and had a teacher teach me properly. So definitely I think it is so important for girls to do home economics, because through life it will just stand to them’.
While women variously experience gender as a specific way of being in the world with ascribed responsibilities associated with it, the different perspectives described above also reveal that gender identity is complex, enacted and negotiated across the life-course, where accountability is perceived in different ways depending on the context. The following perspectives show some of the forces that influence ways in which gender work roles are both sustained, challenged, and constantly shifting (Bradley et al, 2006; Connell, 2002).