Narrative reading list on Cooking as Women: Agency, Resistance, and Community
Curated by Thadini Liyanage. She is currently the Outreach Manager at Everystory. A short bio of Thadini can be found after the reading list.
Edited by Widya Kumarasinghe
I often reflect on what it truly means to be a woman in the kitchen, especially as someone who has had the privilege of finding joy in cooking. Yet, having watched my Amma, Achchi, and countless other women navigate the kitchen, I see how deeply this space is entangled with patriarchal expectations. And yet, within it lies the potential for both resistance and reclamation.
Can women find agency through cooking? The answer is complex, as cooking is inextricably connected to the socio-political and economic realities of existing within a patriarchal system of oppression. Reclaiming agency and finding joy and pleasure through cooking can’t be truly understood without reflecting on the gendered expectations imposed on women. The stories and resources referred to here attempt to grapple with this layered relationship women have with cooking.
Gendered Norms and Behaviour
We've all heard it, “ගැණු ළමයෙක් උනාම උයන්න දැනගන්න ඕනේ” [as a girl you need to know how to cook]. A constant reminder of what it means to be a “good woman” bounces off the kitchen walls and settles on our already heavy shoulders. We have been shaped to be caregivers, viewing cooking as an extension of our identity and a fundamental accomplishment of embodying the glorified feminine persona.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) is a landmark work in feminist scholarship and one of the first to critically examine the politics of ideal femininity. She examines the construction of the ‘good woman’ persona and the enduring patriarchal ties between women and domestic labour, challenging the then-dominant (and still persistent) belief that a woman’s fulfillment is confined to the home. Similarly, Sanjana Rathore, in her essay Glorification of ‘maa ke hath ka khana’ – a way to force cooking on women, explores the complex relationship women have with cooking and the romanticization of cooking as a defining trait of the ‘good woman.’
To love and nurture?
Observing the politics of cooking extends beyond just the act of cooking itself to eating and serving behaviors too. For example, Rathore notes that women often eat last, prioritize saving food for the men or children in their families, and are generally expected to serve the rest of the family first, often at their own expense. As I read this, I found myself reflecting on my Amma’s behavior during mealtime. I realized that she often waits to serve herself until after everyone else has to ensure that there’s enough food. This small act that often goes unnoticed is potentially a subconscious effort to meet the expectation of being a nurturing caregiver.
Women are also often kept in kitchen spaces with the flimsy justification that the work done there is a labour of love. The Kitchen as a Political Space, discusses how the kitchen is transformed into a “site of specifically gendered tension, a room that both symbolically and literally prevents women from leaving the world of the domestic.”
Unseen Labour and Domestic Work
A brilliant movie I recommend is The Great Indian Kitchen. This movie is a bold portrayal of unseen labor and the burden of internalised patriarchal expectations. Salini Vineeth’s essay ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’: a necessary dialogue on ridiculous patriarchal norms in marriage provides a spirited reflection on the movie and its accurate representation of social taboos that strip women of their agency. On the other hand, Shruti Herbert in her essay The Great Indian Kitchen: A Narrative of Upper-Caste Women’s Victimhood and Effortless Solidarities, offers a different perspective on the film by examining caste and class.
The short film Juice is peppered with similar interactions that comment on unseen labour and care work, particularly associated with cooking. This is seen especially in the film’s depiction of gender-based divisions of space within the home. In a hot kitchen with one working fan, wives prepare dinner while husbands relax in the air-conditioned living room with drinks and snacks. "Not like she's got a lot of work at home. At least here she can be an extra hand in the kitchen," a male character remarks, revealing how women's labor at home remains unrecognized and how they are denied respite from gendered expectations even as guests.
(Juice, 2018)
This video by Kehelmala Studios shows us a similar scene. The unsettling juxtaposition of the mother frying fish in the hot kitchen while drunken political discussions rage nearby highlights women's invisible labor, especially when the father suggests his daughter could replace her mother at the stove, reinforcing how both women are confined to domestic spaces while men occupy realms of leisure and discourse.
Savindri Perera's MasterChef experience highlighted how women's food work is seriously undervalued, especially when cooking ethnic cuisine. When viewers dismissed her Sri Lankan cooking as "something anyone's mother could do," it trivialized the skill and effort involved in preparing traditional dishes, reducing it to a routine obligation rather than a skill deserving recognition.
Savindri beautifully contextualized the food she made [at 44:25] by sharing how her mother would wake up at 5 am to prepare meals for her family before heading to work by 6:45 am, the story of many of our mothers. Her story and the reaction to Savindri’s cooking powerfully illustrated how women's labour and efforts, and by extension our heritage food, are devalued.
Changing Landscapes
The Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book, published in the 1900s, is considered a revolutionary publication for the way it reflected the changing cultural landscape as technology became increasingly accessible in the modern kitchen.
(Ceylon Daily News : Cookery Book,1964)
This was a fairly radical notion to recognize how technology could ease women's domestic burden. By creating a practical guide focused on saving housewives' energy, time, and money, the author was offering women a different kind of freedom - one that valued their labour and sought to lighten it, providing a subtle form of liberation within the expected domestic role.
This period marked a critical turning point in history as new technologies were fundamentally transforming women's relationship with domestic work. I recommended reading Apoorva Sripathi’s Knives Out - The joys of a mixer-grinder and the political ergonomics of Indian kitchens, in which she provides a comprehensive account on the role of technology in the making of the modern kitchen. When talking about kitchen spaces, we must mention Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the feminist architect credited with designing the modern kitchen. Schütte-Lihotzky designed the “Frankfurt Kitchen,” in a way that would save cost and energy for women and make women’s lives easier.
Ernst-May-Gesellschaft Frankfurt am Main / Reinhard Wegmann
Interestingly, it was during this period in 1960s Sri Lanka that a young mother, Aban Pestonjee, juggling household responsibilities and the care of her three small children, laid the foundation for what would become Abans. At a time when technology was transforming domestic labor, she envisioned solutions that would ease women's household burdens—an idea that grew into one of Sri Lanka’s largest companies today.
Aban Pestonjee and her husband Pesi Pestonjee
However, while appliances like mixer grinders and blenders have increased cooking efficiency, they've failed to disrupt the deeply entrenched gendered nature of domestic work, instead maybe even reinforcing traditional expectations of women as primary food providers regardless of technological advancement. The time saved through these modern cooking technologies rarely translates to a redistribution of household responsibilities between genders, but rather gets redirected to other domestic tasks still primarily performed by women. This technological evolution in the kitchen represents a paradox where convenience has improved without challenging the fundamental inequity of who shoulders domestic labour responsibilities. I suggest reading Elizabeth B. Silva’s article, The Cook, the Cooker and the Gendering of the Kitchen, where she focuses on how household technology interacts with patterns of gender hierarchies over time.
Perception of Men in the Kitchen vs Women in the Kitchen
English Vinglish, directed by Gauri Shinde, is a brilliant movie that follows the life of Sashi, a middle-aged homemaker striving to learn English to gain her family's respect. The film provides a strong commentary on the often-overlooked aspects of labor and caregiving.
(English Vinglish, 2012)
Ironically, this perception is carried through to professional kitchens. The culinary world is dominated by male chefs. A world where women are seen as ‘not macho enough’ to handle the ‘heat’ of the kitchen.
“There is a fine line for what is considered acceptable behavior for women in this “macho” environment. Women described themselves as “invaders” of men chef’s turf, and their male supervisors often had preconceived ideas that women were not physically and emotionally strong enough to work in kitchens and would give them fewer high-status jobs.” (Broyles, 2011)
Interestingly, much of the literature on this topic refers to the kitchen adopting a military hierarchical structure. Anne Cooper (as cited in Paltzer, 2011) explains that the high-intensity atmosphere seen in professional kitchens today can be attributed to the 14th and 15th-century conditions in which military men would cook. The TV series The Bear, masterfully recreates this atmosphere, with the later seasons exploring how this culture can be changed for the better.
Why Are Women Not so Successful as Men in the Professional Kitchen? is a compelling case study highlighting Gabrielle, a Colombian chef, who faces systemic sexism limiting her access to commercial kitchens. In Women Not in the Kitchen: A Look at Gender Equality in the Restaurant Industry, Paltzer argues that gender bias significantly contributes to the underrepresentation of women in higher-ranking positions within professional kitchens. Similarly, Someone is in the Kitchen, where is Dinah? Gendered Dimensions of the Professional Culinary World, is a fascinating study of four women culinary graduates transitioning to workplaces, highlighting how they have created spaces in which they can thrive. While engaging with these readings, I observed that while more women are entering culinary school, few achieve fulfilling careers in the industry—a clear example of the Leaky Pipeline phenomenon, where the gendered realities of the culinary world prevent many women from thriving in this space. The leaky pipeline phenomenon is extensively discussed regarding women in STEM fields, yet this same pattern is rarely examined or applied to women's experiences in other professions.
I stumbled across Vice's article We Asked Male Chefs Why There Are So Few Females in Professional Dutch Kitchens by Saskia Beertsen—it'll probably enrage you, but it's worth reading. Beertsen simply presents the male chefs' responses without commentary, letting their very telling perceptions about women in professional kitchens speak for themselves. I also recommend reading chef Dominique Crenn's We're Not 'Female Chefs,' Just Chefs - an insightful reflection of her experience in the industry and her perspective on women in professional kitchens.
Asma Khan and her all-female kitchen, Mughal cuisine and Chinese takeaway
Cooking and Pleasure - Men Vs Women
Growing up, I was used to seeing my father in the kitchen. Although Ammi handled the bulk of the food work in our household, Thaththi’s presence in the kitchen wasn’t a rare sighting. However, over the years, I have realized the difference between his cooking experience and my mother's.
The music blaring from the radio signaled that Thaththi had entered the kitchen. If we dared to step into his space, he would chase us out for "disrupting his process." He would dance to the tunes while inventing recipes that could never be replicated. He transformed whatever was in the fridge into creative "masterpieces" that often didn’t make logical sense, but surprisingly tasted quite delicious. For him, cooking was a source of pleasure and stress relief, and it was something he found joy in because he wasn’t burdened with the duty of food work. Michelle Szabo’s study, Foodwork or Foodplay? Men’s Domestic Cooking, Privilege and Leisure explores how men's domestic cooking exists at the intersection of leisure and work, revealing the gendered nature of household food labor.
My Ammi, like many of our mothers, is responsible for meal time. She finishes her office work for the day and stumbles into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Although she has help in the kitchen and loves cooking, preparing dinner after a long day isn’t something she looks forward to. Ammi makes the most delicious food, but that doesn’t always translate to her finding pleasure in cooking. We often glorify our mother’s cooking without realizing the dynamics tied to the act of cooking.
It leads us to the question: can women find pleasure in cooking? I believe it is possible yet it remains a privilege. The study Caring About Food: Doing Gender in the Foodie Kitchen examines how women's ability to enjoy food is often linked to both class privilege and the societal expectation of care work. The relationship women have with cooking is complex; however, the expectations of care work can further diminish the pleasure that cooking can provide, making it a privilege for women to be able to cook for pleasure.
“I realised how different my relationship with cooking was compared to my mother’s. For her, cooking was never a hobby. It was just another duty she had to fulfil, rain or sunshine. Her family’s sustenance depended on it.” (Bose,2022)
Sanjukata Bose’s article Who Finds Joy in Cooking thoughtfully examines her complex relationship with cooking, highlighting the tension between potential pleasure and domestic obligation. Her observation that "The joy sought in cooking has to be all about the mouths that must be fed" powerfully illustrates how women's ability to find pleasure in cooking is constrained by household responsibilities. Bose reflects on cooking as a source of agency and joy—a stark contrast to her mother's experience, as she benefits from fewer domestic responsibilities and freedom from 'time poverty.' Similarly, Alicia Kennedy in How I Learned To Become A Domestic Goddess talks about her relationship with cooking and how learning to cook brought her pleasure and agency.
One can’t write about the pleasures of cooking without mentioning the domestic goddess herself, Nigella Lawson. Ironically, Lawson received quite a bit of criticism for the title and implications of her cookbook How to be a Domestic Goddess. Joanne Hallow's research, Feeling Like a Domestic Goddess: Postfeminism and Cooking, offers an interesting perspective on this debate. At the heart of it, what Nigella really writes about is finding comfort and joy in cooking, something she mentions in Nigella Kitchen as a preface to a chapter titled ‘A Dream of Hearth and Home’ in response to criticism for How to be a Domestic Goddess.
(Nigella Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home, 2015)
I recommend reading Frances Steller’s article My Reunion With the Domestic Goddess. It’s a beautifully written piece filled with anecdotes about Nigella that illustrate what a joyful experience cooking is for her.
Another must-watch is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, an incredibly fun and delectable series featuring the effervescent Chef Samin Nosrat. The show isn’t necessarily a commentary on pleasure and cooking, but watching Sami cook is like watching a kid in the candy store of their dreams. The way she talks about food, the thought process behind every dish, and her entire persona embodies the idea of finding joy in cooking.
Amidst all this is also the arrival of the tradwife trend, where women content creators of the internet adulate the joys of traditional homemaking and cooking roles, dressed in beautiful outfits with impeccable skin and hair (and making a lot of money off this content). It's alluring and hard to look away from. Work is hard and unrewarding and the sheer visual escape that content offers also speaks to the parts of us who just want joy and pleasure. The every woman can be a Domestic Goddess trope has been around for a while, but has been intensified by the tradwife trend. I recommend reading Rohita Naraharisetty’s article on the same, where she examines the complex layers of the tradwife trend. One of the most important aspects of Naraharisetty’s commentary is the discussion of the ‘manosphere’. A recent video that made the rounds on social media is a very telling example of this: the reaction from men made it clear that it was catering to the male gaze, with a lot of men posting heart emojis while other remarks signalled the patriarchal expectations perpetuated by the manosphere.
(Source: x)
This trend leaves me with many questions. Is it allowing women to find agency? Is it an inevitable byproduct of choice feminism, or is it at its core a perpetuation of systematic patriarchy? I’m inclined to side with the latter but I urge you to make an informed decision on where you stand. However, one thing I can say with certainty is that while we may not dream of making cereal from scratch, we would enjoy the luxury of having the option to create homemade jams or breads or whatever we’d like purely for the pleasure of it. The allure of all this is having the leisure and freedom to do and indulge in what we find joyful, one which our current ways of living and working in a capitalist system rarely allows us.
Reclaiming identity
When we think about cooking as a reclamation of identity, an important perspective that cannot go unnoticed is the experience of the immigrant woman. In immigrant narratives, food often serves as a cultural connector. We frequently see mothers and grandmothers using food to recreate the essence of home. For instance, in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake:
“Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a central square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl. She adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices of green chilli pepper, wishing there were mustard oil to pour into the mix. Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India, spilling from newspaper cones.” (The Namesake, 2003)
Ashima’s story is one of the many we find in the pages of a diasporic novel, where food memory is an integral part of a community's cultural consciousness. This is extensively discussed in “Consumption And The Diaspora: Food, Gender And Memory In Migrant Narratives” by Gayathri S. Another excellent book that emphasizes the importance of food and cooking practices for immigrant women is "Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens" by Shankari Chandran. In the nursing home kitchen, Maya’s culinary approach goes beyond basic nutrition, serving as a deliberate practice of cultural memory and intergenerational dialogue. By preparing dishes that represent not just Sri Lankan cuisine but the diverse cultural backgrounds of her residents, each meal becomes a carefully crafted narrative that allows residents to reconnect with their personal histories, bridging the gap between displacement and home.
I recommend reading Food to remember: culinary practice and diasporic identity, a study conducted by Razia Parveen, where she uses orally transmitted recipes and interviews with south asian women settled in Northern England to examine the importance of cooking practices for women weaving together the threads of nostalgia, memories, and migration.
For Cynthia Shanmugalingam, at the heart of this tapestry lies the comforting presence of Sri Lankan food. Rambutan goes beyond the limits of a traditional cookbook; it serves as a culinary memoir, emerging as a profound cartography of diasporic identity and cultural negotiation. Her cookbook becomes more than a collection of recipes – it is a tender, radical act of reclaiming and reimagining home as a fluid, dynamic space which can be created through cooking.
(Rambutan, 2022)
“Rambutan is the story of an immigrant kid in England trying to cook her way out of the profound sense of loss about the place her parents call home.” (Shanmugalingam,2022)
Resistance
Cooking as a form of economic resistance
Cooking has also proven to be a means of survival, resilience, and financial independence for women. It could take the form of selling homemade jam and shorteats, string hoppers for your neighbours, or cakes and desserts as a home baker. Vidya Balachander in her essay The Ammachi Canteens of Sri Lanka: A Unique Model of Socio-economic Empowerment, explores how government-run eateries in northern Sri Lanka, known as Ammachi Unavagam (meaning 'grandmother's eatery' in Tamil, and called ‘Hela Bojun’ in the south), are empowering women by providing them with financial independence and challenging traditional gender roles.
The Kilinochchi branch of the Ammachi canteens (Vidya Balachander, 2020)
As she explores the dynamics of the Ammachi canteens, Balachander focuses on the stories of the women working there. Sudarshani, a 40-year-old woman from Jaffna, is a “…mother of four [who] ran a string of home-based businesses to supplement the family income. Like many other women in this part of the country, which still bears a disproportionate burden of the socio-economic impact of the country’s nearly three-decade-long civil war, Sudarshini has had an intimate experience of upheaval and strife. “It is the same to me whether my husband is there or not,” she said, implying that his contribution to the household was minimal. Driven to occupy the role of breadwinner, she has found a source of livelihood—and a shared solidarity—in and through the Ammachi canteen.”
Moreover, this labour model offers adaptive employment that responds to workers' lived realities, providing flexible shift-based arrangements that center each woman’s needs. By designing work structures that accommodate personal requirements, this approach represents a radical reimagining of labor organization that prioritizes human and a community’s needs over rigid institutional frameworks.
Similarly, Handmade: Stories of Strength Shared through Recipes from the Women of Sri Lanka, is a remarkable collection of recipes that showcases the stories of 34 women from Jaffna to Trincomalee, across Kilinochchi and Vavuniya. Their culinary practices are not simply about nourishment, but represent complex choreographies of survival – intimate acts of defiance that transform kitchen spaces into powerful sites of personal and collective resistance.
(Handmade: Stories of Strength Shared through Recipes from the Women of Sri Lanka, 2015)
Cooking during times of conflict
Cooking during times of conflict has become an integral form of resistance. Looking back at our own history, food has played an important role in women’s acts of resistance. For example, consider the Mullivaikkal tragedy. During the most intense period of the Sri Lankan civil war, the military's strategic blockade of Tamil-populated areas created a humanitarian crisis of extreme proportions. By cutting off critical supplies like food, medicine, and other essential resources, the government aimed to strategically undermine the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In these dire circumstances, kanji—a simple rice porridge—emerged as a crucial lifeline for survival. What was traditionally a humble, nutritious meal became a symbol of survival, with families and communities stretching meager resources to stave off hunger and maintain hope during a period of extreme vulnerability. Pallavi Pundir in her essay The Fearlessness of Kanji explores the history behind Mullivaikkal Kanji through the stories of women who survived the war.
Over the past year in Gaza, amid the devastating destruction, we also witnessed women using cooking as a form of resistance. This wasn’t limited to makeshift community kitchens where they prepared basic meals for survival. We also saw women leveraging social media to showcase Palestinian cuisine as a form of resistance and solidarity against Zionist propaganda to reframe food from the region as belonging to ‘Israel’. Beth Henly in Flavors of Resistance: Cooking Up Solidarity for Palestine, an interview with the co-founders of Flavors of Resistance, explores the significance of using food as a means of building solidarity and battling oppression.
“Food is inherently political. It has been used as a weapon of oppression by the Zionist entity. We have seen the deliberate use of starvation tactics and the blockade of aid to Gaza. What we eat is never just a meal—it is a symbol of endurance and resistance. It is a means of asserting our identity in the face of erasure.”
Similarly, “Chef Renad,” an 11-year-old girl from Gaza, began using her cooking videos to bring hope and inspire resilience in her community. Priyanka Chandani in her article This Ten-Year-Old Chef From Gaza Inspires People With Her Cookery Videos discusses Renad’s story and how cooking has evolved from a passion to an act of resistance.
I recommend reading Our arepa: Resistance from the Kitchen. In this deeply personal and powerful essay, Alejandra Laprea explores the resilience of Venezuelan women during an economic crisis, using the arepa—a traditional corn cake—as a powerful metaphor for collective cultural resistance. She describes how Venezuelan women have transformed from victims to protagonists, fighting economic hardship by preserving and reinventing traditional food practices, and as a form of collective resistance against economic challenges that seek to destabilize their society.
End of Spring by Sahar Khalifeh is a beautiful read that chronicles the struggles of the Palestinian people, focusing on resistance during the 2002 siege of Yasir Arafat’s official headquarters. What I found most interesting is Um Saud’s character. During the height of the conflict, she becomes a symbol of hope and resistance through her community kitchen.
“She gathered all the women in the neighborhood and delegated jobs—four to make rice, four to make dough, four to cook and peel the fava beans and the potatoes and to cut off the ends of the green beans and the okra. It was a great kitchen that could feed hundreds of fighters and all the inhabitants of the neighborhood of Hosh al-Atou.” (Khalifeh, 2008, p.179)
She provides the women in her neighbourhood a cause to work towards, a space for social interaction and a safe space for women during armed conflict. In doing so, she posits herself as a community leader, implementing a solution on a grassroots level to the issues of hunger faced
during conflict. Her efforts are intrinsically a political statement, it is a form of resistance to the atrocities faced by many of her people. Her conscious economic and political decision to feed her community becomes a significant part of the resistance.
Community
When I think about cooking as community-building, my heart returns to Achchi's kitchen. Only at her funeral did I truly grasp how essential cooking was to her social fabric. One after another, women approached us with stories of how she'd cooked for them through pregnancy, illness, financial hardship—the list seemed endless. I was stunned. I'd always experienced Achchi's food as a warm embrace, but had naively never recognized how, for her, cooking transcended being merely a labor of love. It was her way of creating safe spaces, offering support, and weaving together a community of women. I see it in my mother now, as she carries on my grandmother's legacy through food. Women everywhere create community this way—trading ingredients, sharing homemade pickles, kimchi or jams, exchanging recipes, and little tips to make a dish better. These seemingly small acts have become an intrinsic part of how we build communities.
I loved the Chef’s Table episode featuring Asma Khan. A simple invitation to tea extended to other South Asian women in her neighbourhood grew into friendships that formed the foundation for the Darjeeling Express, a London restaurant run entirely by an all-women team. Through cooking, she not only built community but also created safe spaces where women could find genuine connections and engage with cooking as an art form.
"There is no success that I could have had in my life that goes anywhere close to how I felt seeing these women break their chains … Coming from nothing, from memories of hunger and deprivation, huge racism… They were free, and this, I think, is the reason why we are successful. You feel that power when you come into my restaurant. It's the Shakti [cosmic energy] and the strength of women. You'll see every woman is laughing and smiling. Because for them this is not a job. This is liberation." from Asma Khan, a force for women in Food
Women build community through cooking and food, from kitty parties to book clubs to mahila samithi meetings - across diverse social classes and geographies, but it doesn’t stop there. Food is also an integral part of social movements and activism. Lola Oluefemi writes about the role of food in shaping radical social movements in her article Hungry Work. She explores how community kitchens and shared meals create spaces for those who believe in freedom to speak to each other and think critically about their sociopolitical landscapes. I also recommend reading this beautiful living etymology of cooking by Dr Anna Sulan Masing about women-led networks that nourish, support and fuel solidarity. In Sri Lanka, Dabindu Collective and other women’s organisations, similar to the movements Olufemi and Masing describe, demonstrate how community kitchens can serve as both safe spaces and powerful tools for grassroots organizing. By leveraging these spaces, they mobilize women workers and activists, fostering solidarity and collective action.
(Photos from the Archive Dabindu Collective)
The kitchen is undeniably a political space where women negotiate gendered expectations and personal agency, finding moments of joy, resistance, and community. From home cooks to professional chefs, from diaspora communities to activist circles, cooking reveals itself as a powerful language through which women express identity, build solidarity, and challenge oppressive systems. This dialogue represents an ongoing process of understanding, challenging, and reshaping the complex social narratives that surround women's relationships with cooking.
Other resources
Film and Television
Mrs the Bollywood remake of The Great Indian Kitchen (although we prefer the Malayalam original)
Chef’s Table: Season 3: Episode 1 “Korean nun”
Photo Archive from Dabindu Collective
Other writing and studies
From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives On Women and Food by Arlene Voski Avakian and Barbara Haber
"Kneading Politics": Cookery and the American Woman Suffrage Movement by Jessica Derleth
Is Michael Pollan a sexist pig? by Emily Matchar
Reference list
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Kehelmala Studios (2024). ‘Who Will Win? | කවුද දිනන්නේ?’ Instagram. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAGZdYYoN5D/?igsh=Mnh5dnNhejNmYzc0 [Accessed 5 Mar. 2025].
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Szabo, M. (2012). Domestic Cooking. Privilege and Leisure. Sociology, 47(4), pp.623–638.
The Bear, (2022). Hulu.
The Great Indian Kitchen. (2021). [Film ] Mankind Cinema.
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Williams, H. (2025). With Love, Meghan and the unstoppable rise of the ‘domestic goddess’. [online] BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250228-the-unstoppable-rise-of-the-domestic-goddess [Accessed 10 Mar. 2025].
Thadini is a graduate from the University of Kelaniya, with an English Honors degree. Having always had a keen eye for social injustice, Thadini is driven towards creating safe spaces for minorities. This is evidenced in her dissertation research, which focuses on understanding the experiences of neurodivergent students in education and recognizing the need to create inclusive education practices in Sri Lanka. Presently, she is the Outreach program manager at Everystory Sri Lanka. Thadini aspires to continue on her journey of creating social equality and equity by delving deeper into the field of sustainable development as a career path.
Curated by Thadini Liyanage. She is currently the Outreach Manager at Everystory. A short bio of Thadini can be found after the reading list.
Edited by Widya Kumarasinghe
I often reflect on what it truly means to be a woman in the kitchen, especially as someone who has had the privilege of finding joy in cooking. Yet, having watched my Amma, Achchi, and countless other women navigate the kitchen, I see how deeply this space is entangled with patriarchal expectations. And yet, within it lies the potential for both resistance and reclamation.
Can women find agency through cooking? The answer is complex, as cooking is inextricably connected to the socio-political and economic realities of existing within a patriarchal system of oppression. Reclaiming agency and finding joy and pleasure through cooking can’t be truly understood without reflecting on the gendered expectations imposed on women. The stories and resources referred to here attempt to grapple with this layered relationship women have with cooking.
Gendered Norms and Behaviour
We've all heard it, “ගැණු ළමයෙක් උනාම උයන්න දැනගන්න ඕනේ” [as a girl you need to know how to cook]. A constant reminder of what it means to be a “good woman” bounces off the kitchen walls and settles on our already heavy shoulders. We have been shaped to be caregivers, viewing cooking as an extension of our identity and a fundamental accomplishment of embodying the glorified feminine persona.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) is a landmark work in feminist scholarship and one of the first to critically examine the politics of ideal femininity. She examines the construction of the ‘good woman’ persona and the enduring patriarchal ties between women and domestic labour, challenging the then-dominant (and still persistent) belief that a woman’s fulfillment is confined to the home. Similarly, Sanjana Rathore, in her essay Glorification of ‘maa ke hath ka khana’ – a way to force cooking on women, explores the complex relationship women have with cooking and the romanticization of cooking as a defining trait of the ‘good woman.’
To love and nurture?
Observing the politics of cooking extends beyond just the act of cooking itself to eating and serving behaviors too. For example, Rathore notes that women often eat last, prioritize saving food for the men or children in their families, and are generally expected to serve the rest of the family first, often at their own expense. As I read this, I found myself reflecting on my Amma’s behavior during mealtime. I realized that she often waits to serve herself until after everyone else has to ensure that there’s enough food. This small act that often goes unnoticed is potentially a subconscious effort to meet the expectation of being a nurturing caregiver.
Women are also often kept in kitchen spaces with the flimsy justification that the work done there is a labour of love. The Kitchen as a Political Space, discusses how the kitchen is transformed into a “site of specifically gendered tension, a room that both symbolically and literally prevents women from leaving the world of the domestic.”
Unseen Labour and Domestic Work
A brilliant movie I recommend is The Great Indian Kitchen. This movie is a bold portrayal of unseen labor and the burden of internalised patriarchal expectations. Salini Vineeth’s essay ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’: a necessary dialogue on ridiculous patriarchal norms in marriage provides a spirited reflection on the movie and its accurate representation of social taboos that strip women of their agency. On the other hand, Shruti Herbert in her essay The Great Indian Kitchen: A Narrative of Upper-Caste Women’s Victimhood and Effortless Solidarities, offers a different perspective on the film by examining caste and class.
The short film Juice is peppered with similar interactions that comment on unseen labour and care work, particularly associated with cooking. This is seen especially in the film’s depiction of gender-based divisions of space within the home. In a hot kitchen with one working fan, wives prepare dinner while husbands relax in the air-conditioned living room with drinks and snacks. "Not like she's got a lot of work at home. At least here she can be an extra hand in the kitchen," a male character remarks, revealing how women's labor at home remains unrecognized and how they are denied respite from gendered expectations even as guests.
(Juice, 2018)
This video by Kehelmala Studios shows us a similar scene. The unsettling juxtaposition of the mother frying fish in the hot kitchen while drunken political discussions rage nearby highlights women's invisible labor, especially when the father suggests his daughter could replace her mother at the stove, reinforcing how both women are confined to domestic spaces while men occupy realms of leisure and discourse.
Savindri Perera's MasterChef experience highlighted how women's food work is seriously undervalued, especially when cooking ethnic cuisine. When viewers dismissed her Sri Lankan cooking as "something anyone's mother could do," it trivialized the skill and effort involved in preparing traditional dishes, reducing it to a routine obligation rather than a skill deserving recognition.
Savindri beautifully contextualized the food she made [at 44:25] by sharing how her mother would wake up at 5 am to prepare meals for her family before heading to work by 6:45 am, the story of many of our mothers. Her story and the reaction to Savindri’s cooking powerfully illustrated how women's labour and efforts, and by extension our heritage food, are devalued.
Changing Landscapes
The Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book, published in the 1900s, is considered a revolutionary publication for the way it reflected the changing cultural landscape as technology became increasingly accessible in the modern kitchen.
(Ceylon Daily News : Cookery Book,1964)
This was a fairly radical notion to recognize how technology could ease women's domestic burden. By creating a practical guide focused on saving housewives' energy, time, and money, the author was offering women a different kind of freedom - one that valued their labour and sought to lighten it, providing a subtle form of liberation within the expected domestic role.
This period marked a critical turning point in history as new technologies were fundamentally transforming women's relationship with domestic work. I recommended reading Apoorva Sripathi’s Knives Out - The joys of a mixer-grinder and the political ergonomics of Indian kitchens, in which she provides a comprehensive account on the role of technology in the making of the modern kitchen. When talking about kitchen spaces, we must mention Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the feminist architect credited with designing the modern kitchen. Schütte-Lihotzky designed the “Frankfurt Kitchen,” in a way that would save cost and energy for women and make women’s lives easier.
Ernst-May-Gesellschaft Frankfurt am Main / Reinhard Wegmann
Interestingly, it was during this period in 1960s Sri Lanka that a young mother, Aban Pestonjee, juggling household responsibilities and the care of her three small children, laid the foundation for what would become Abans. At a time when technology was transforming domestic labor, she envisioned solutions that would ease women's household burdens—an idea that grew into one of Sri Lanka’s largest companies today.
Aban Pestonjee and her husband Pesi Pestonjee
However, while appliances like mixer grinders and blenders have increased cooking efficiency, they've failed to disrupt the deeply entrenched gendered nature of domestic work, instead maybe even reinforcing traditional expectations of women as primary food providers regardless of technological advancement. The time saved through these modern cooking technologies rarely translates to a redistribution of household responsibilities between genders, but rather gets redirected to other domestic tasks still primarily performed by women. This technological evolution in the kitchen represents a paradox where convenience has improved without challenging the fundamental inequity of who shoulders domestic labour responsibilities. I suggest reading Elizabeth B. Silva’s article, The Cook, the Cooker and the Gendering of the Kitchen, where she focuses on how household technology interacts with patterns of gender hierarchies over time.
Perception of Men in the Kitchen vs Women in the Kitchen
English Vinglish, directed by Gauri Shinde, is a brilliant movie that follows the life of Sashi, a middle-aged homemaker striving to learn English to gain her family's respect. The film provides a strong commentary on the often-overlooked aspects of labor and caregiving.
(English Vinglish, 2012)
Ironically, this perception is carried through to professional kitchens. The culinary world is dominated by male chefs. A world where women are seen as ‘not macho enough’ to handle the ‘heat’ of the kitchen.
“There is a fine line for what is considered acceptable behavior for women in this “macho” environment. Women described themselves as “invaders” of men chef’s turf, and their male supervisors often had preconceived ideas that women were not physically and emotionally strong enough to work in kitchens and would give them fewer high-status jobs.” (Broyles, 2011)
Interestingly, much of the literature on this topic refers to the kitchen adopting a military hierarchical structure. Anne Cooper (as cited in Paltzer, 2011) explains that the high-intensity atmosphere seen in professional kitchens today can be attributed to the 14th and 15th-century conditions in which military men would cook. The TV series The Bear, masterfully recreates this atmosphere, with the later seasons exploring how this culture can be changed for the better.
Why Are Women Not so Successful as Men in the Professional Kitchen? is a compelling case study highlighting Gabrielle, a Colombian chef, who faces systemic sexism limiting her access to commercial kitchens. In Women Not in the Kitchen: A Look at Gender Equality in the Restaurant Industry, Paltzer argues that gender bias significantly contributes to the underrepresentation of women in higher-ranking positions within professional kitchens. Similarly, Someone is in the Kitchen, where is Dinah? Gendered Dimensions of the Professional Culinary World, is a fascinating study of four women culinary graduates transitioning to workplaces, highlighting how they have created spaces in which they can thrive. While engaging with these readings, I observed that while more women are entering culinary school, few achieve fulfilling careers in the industry—a clear example of the Leaky Pipeline phenomenon, where the gendered realities of the culinary world prevent many women from thriving in this space. The leaky pipeline phenomenon is extensively discussed regarding women in STEM fields, yet this same pattern is rarely examined or applied to women's experiences in other professions.
I stumbled across Vice's article We Asked Male Chefs Why There Are So Few Females in Professional Dutch Kitchens by Saskia Beertsen—it'll probably enrage you, but it's worth reading. Beertsen simply presents the male chefs' responses without commentary, letting their very telling perceptions about women in professional kitchens speak for themselves. I also recommend reading chef Dominique Crenn's We're Not 'Female Chefs,' Just Chefs - an insightful reflection of her experience in the industry and her perspective on women in professional kitchens.
Asma Khan and her all-female kitchen, Mughal cuisine and Chinese takeaway
Cooking and Pleasure - Men Vs Women
Growing up, I was used to seeing my father in the kitchen. Although Ammi handled the bulk of the food work in our household, Thaththi’s presence in the kitchen wasn’t a rare sighting. However, over the years, I have realized the difference between his cooking experience and my mother's.
The music blaring from the radio signaled that Thaththi had entered the kitchen. If we dared to step into his space, he would chase us out for "disrupting his process." He would dance to the tunes while inventing recipes that could never be replicated. He transformed whatever was in the fridge into creative "masterpieces" that often didn’t make logical sense, but surprisingly tasted quite delicious. For him, cooking was a source of pleasure and stress relief, and it was something he found joy in because he wasn’t burdened with the duty of food work. Michelle Szabo’s study, Foodwork or Foodplay? Men’s Domestic Cooking, Privilege and Leisure explores how men's domestic cooking exists at the intersection of leisure and work, revealing the gendered nature of household food labor.
My Ammi, like many of our mothers, is responsible for meal time. She finishes her office work for the day and stumbles into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Although she has help in the kitchen and loves cooking, preparing dinner after a long day isn’t something she looks forward to. Ammi makes the most delicious food, but that doesn’t always translate to her finding pleasure in cooking. We often glorify our mother’s cooking without realizing the dynamics tied to the act of cooking.
It leads us to the question: can women find pleasure in cooking? I believe it is possible yet it remains a privilege. The study Caring About Food: Doing Gender in the Foodie Kitchen examines how women's ability to enjoy food is often linked to both class privilege and the societal expectation of care work. The relationship women have with cooking is complex; however, the expectations of care work can further diminish the pleasure that cooking can provide, making it a privilege for women to be able to cook for pleasure.
“I realised how different my relationship with cooking was compared to my mother’s. For her, cooking was never a hobby. It was just another duty she had to fulfil, rain or sunshine. Her family’s sustenance depended on it.” (Bose,2022)
Sanjukata Bose’s article Who Finds Joy in Cooking thoughtfully examines her complex relationship with cooking, highlighting the tension between potential pleasure and domestic obligation. Her observation that "The joy sought in cooking has to be all about the mouths that must be fed" powerfully illustrates how women's ability to find pleasure in cooking is constrained by household responsibilities. Bose reflects on cooking as a source of agency and joy—a stark contrast to her mother's experience, as she benefits from fewer domestic responsibilities and freedom from 'time poverty.' Similarly, Alicia Kennedy in How I Learned To Become A Domestic Goddess talks about her relationship with cooking and how learning to cook brought her pleasure and agency.
One can’t write about the pleasures of cooking without mentioning the domestic goddess herself, Nigella Lawson. Ironically, Lawson received quite a bit of criticism for the title and implications of her cookbook How to be a Domestic Goddess. Joanne Hallow's research, Feeling Like a Domestic Goddess: Postfeminism and Cooking, offers an interesting perspective on this debate. At the heart of it, what Nigella really writes about is finding comfort and joy in cooking, something she mentions in Nigella Kitchen as a preface to a chapter titled ‘A Dream of Hearth and Home’ in response to criticism for How to be a Domestic Goddess.
(Nigella Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home, 2015)
I recommend reading Frances Steller’s article My Reunion With the Domestic Goddess. It’s a beautifully written piece filled with anecdotes about Nigella that illustrate what a joyful experience cooking is for her.
Another must-watch is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, an incredibly fun and delectable series featuring the effervescent Chef Samin Nosrat. The show isn’t necessarily a commentary on pleasure and cooking, but watching Sami cook is like watching a kid in the candy store of their dreams. The way she talks about food, the thought process behind every dish, and her entire persona embodies the idea of finding joy in cooking.
Amidst all this is also the arrival of the tradwife trend, where women content creators of the internet adulate the joys of traditional homemaking and cooking roles, dressed in beautiful outfits with impeccable skin and hair (and making a lot of money off this content). It's alluring and hard to look away from. Work is hard and unrewarding and the sheer visual escape that content offers also speaks to the parts of us who just want joy and pleasure. The every woman can be a Domestic Goddess trope has been around for a while, but has been intensified by the tradwife trend. I recommend reading Rohita Naraharisetty’s article on the same, where she examines the complex layers of the tradwife trend. One of the most important aspects of Naraharisetty’s commentary is the discussion of the ‘manosphere’. A recent video that made the rounds on social media is a very telling example of this: the reaction from men made it clear that it was catering to the male gaze, with a lot of men posting heart emojis while other remarks signalled the patriarchal expectations perpetuated by the manosphere.
(Source: x)
This trend leaves me with many questions. Is it allowing women to find agency? Is it an inevitable byproduct of choice feminism, or is it at its core a perpetuation of systematic patriarchy? I’m inclined to side with the latter but I urge you to make an informed decision on where you stand. However, one thing I can say with certainty is that while we may not dream of making cereal from scratch, we would enjoy the luxury of having the option to create homemade jams or breads or whatever we’d like purely for the pleasure of it. The allure of all this is having the leisure and freedom to do and indulge in what we find joyful, one which our current ways of living and working in a capitalist system rarely allows us.
Reclaiming identity
When we think about cooking as a reclamation of identity, an important perspective that cannot go unnoticed is the experience of the immigrant woman. In immigrant narratives, food often serves as a cultural connector. We frequently see mothers and grandmothers using food to recreate the essence of home. For instance, in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake:
“Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a central square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl. She adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices of green chilli pepper, wishing there were mustard oil to pour into the mix. Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India, spilling from newspaper cones.” (The Namesake, 2003)
Ashima’s story is one of the many we find in the pages of a diasporic novel, where food memory is an integral part of a community's cultural consciousness. This is extensively discussed in “Consumption And The Diaspora: Food, Gender And Memory In Migrant Narratives” by Gayathri S. Another excellent book that emphasizes the importance of food and cooking practices for immigrant women is "Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens" by Shankari Chandran. In the nursing home kitchen, Maya’s culinary approach goes beyond basic nutrition, serving as a deliberate practice of cultural memory and intergenerational dialogue. By preparing dishes that represent not just Sri Lankan cuisine but the diverse cultural backgrounds of her residents, each meal becomes a carefully crafted narrative that allows residents to reconnect with their personal histories, bridging the gap between displacement and home.
I recommend reading Food to remember: culinary practice and diasporic identity, a study conducted by Razia Parveen, where she uses orally transmitted recipes and interviews with south asian women settled in Northern England to examine the importance of cooking practices for women weaving together the threads of nostalgia, memories, and migration.
For Cynthia Shanmugalingam, at the heart of this tapestry lies the comforting presence of Sri Lankan food. Rambutan goes beyond the limits of a traditional cookbook; it serves as a culinary memoir, emerging as a profound cartography of diasporic identity and cultural negotiation. Her cookbook becomes more than a collection of recipes – it is a tender, radical act of reclaiming and reimagining home as a fluid, dynamic space which can be created through cooking.
(Rambutan, 2022)
“Rambutan is the story of an immigrant kid in England trying to cook her way out of the profound sense of loss about the place her parents call home.” (Shanmugalingam,2022)
Resistance
Cooking as a form of economic resistance
Cooking has also proven to be a means of survival, resilience, and financial independence for women. It could take the form of selling homemade jam and shorteats, string hoppers for your neighbours, or cakes and desserts as a home baker. Vidya Balachander in her essay The Ammachi Canteens of Sri Lanka: A Unique Model of Socio-economic Empowerment, explores how government-run eateries in northern Sri Lanka, known as Ammachi Unavagam (meaning 'grandmother's eatery' in Tamil, and called ‘Hela Bojun’ in the south), are empowering women by providing them with financial independence and challenging traditional gender roles.
The Kilinochchi branch of the Ammachi canteens (Vidya Balachander, 2020)
As she explores the dynamics of the Ammachi canteens, Balachander focuses on the stories of the women working there. Sudarshani, a 40-year-old woman from Jaffna, is a “…mother of four [who] ran a string of home-based businesses to supplement the family income. Like many other women in this part of the country, which still bears a disproportionate burden of the socio-economic impact of the country’s nearly three-decade-long civil war, Sudarshini has had an intimate experience of upheaval and strife. “It is the same to me whether my husband is there or not,” she said, implying that his contribution to the household was minimal. Driven to occupy the role of breadwinner, she has found a source of livelihood—and a shared solidarity—in and through the Ammachi canteen.”
Moreover, this labour model offers adaptive employment that responds to workers' lived realities, providing flexible shift-based arrangements that center each woman’s needs. By designing work structures that accommodate personal requirements, this approach represents a radical reimagining of labor organization that prioritizes human and a community’s needs over rigid institutional frameworks.
Similarly, Handmade: Stories of Strength Shared through Recipes from the Women of Sri Lanka, is a remarkable collection of recipes that showcases the stories of 34 women from Jaffna to Trincomalee, across Kilinochchi and Vavuniya. Their culinary practices are not simply about nourishment, but represent complex choreographies of survival – intimate acts of defiance that transform kitchen spaces into powerful sites of personal and collective resistance.
(Handmade: Stories of Strength Shared through Recipes from the Women of Sri Lanka, 2015)
Cooking during times of conflict
Cooking during times of conflict has become an integral form of resistance. Looking back at our own history, food has played an important role in women’s acts of resistance. For example, consider the Mullivaikkal tragedy. During the most intense period of the Sri Lankan civil war, the military's strategic blockade of Tamil-populated areas created a humanitarian crisis of extreme proportions. By cutting off critical supplies like food, medicine, and other essential resources, the government aimed to strategically undermine the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In these dire circumstances, kanji—a simple rice porridge—emerged as a crucial lifeline for survival. What was traditionally a humble, nutritious meal became a symbol of survival, with families and communities stretching meager resources to stave off hunger and maintain hope during a period of extreme vulnerability. Pallavi Pundir in her essay The Fearlessness of Kanji explores the history behind Mullivaikkal Kanji through the stories of women who survived the war.
Over the past year in Gaza, amid the devastating destruction, we also witnessed women using cooking as a form of resistance. This wasn’t limited to makeshift community kitchens where they prepared basic meals for survival. We also saw women leveraging social media to showcase Palestinian cuisine as a form of resistance and solidarity against Zionist propaganda to reframe food from the region as belonging to ‘Israel’. Beth Henly in Flavors of Resistance: Cooking Up Solidarity for Palestine, an interview with the co-founders of Flavors of Resistance, explores the significance of using food as a means of building solidarity and battling oppression.
“Food is inherently political. It has been used as a weapon of oppression by the Zionist entity. We have seen the deliberate use of starvation tactics and the blockade of aid to Gaza. What we eat is never just a meal—it is a symbol of endurance and resistance. It is a means of asserting our identity in the face of erasure.”
Similarly, “Chef Renad,” an 11-year-old girl from Gaza, began using her cooking videos to bring hope and inspire resilience in her community. Priyanka Chandani in her article This Ten-Year-Old Chef From Gaza Inspires People With Her Cookery Videos discusses Renad’s story and how cooking has evolved from a passion to an act of resistance.
I recommend reading Our arepa: Resistance from the Kitchen. In this deeply personal and powerful essay, Alejandra Laprea explores the resilience of Venezuelan women during an economic crisis, using the arepa—a traditional corn cake—as a powerful metaphor for collective cultural resistance. She describes how Venezuelan women have transformed from victims to protagonists, fighting economic hardship by preserving and reinventing traditional food practices, and as a form of collective resistance against economic challenges that seek to destabilize their society.
End of Spring by Sahar Khalifeh is a beautiful read that chronicles the struggles of the Palestinian people, focusing on resistance during the 2002 siege of Yasir Arafat’s official headquarters. What I found most interesting is Um Saud’s character. During the height of the conflict, she becomes a symbol of hope and resistance through her community kitchen.
“She gathered all the women in the neighborhood and delegated jobs—four to make rice, four to make dough, four to cook and peel the fava beans and the potatoes and to cut off the ends of the green beans and the okra. It was a great kitchen that could feed hundreds of fighters and all the inhabitants of the neighborhood of Hosh al-Atou.” (Khalifeh, 2008, p.179)
She provides the women in her neighbourhood a cause to work towards, a space for social interaction and a safe space for women during armed conflict. In doing so, she posits herself as a community leader, implementing a solution on a grassroots level to the issues of hunger faced
during conflict. Her efforts are intrinsically a political statement, it is a form of resistance to the atrocities faced by many of her people. Her conscious economic and political decision to feed her community becomes a significant part of the resistance.
Community
When I think about cooking as community-building, my heart returns to Achchi's kitchen. Only at her funeral did I truly grasp how essential cooking was to her social fabric. One after another, women approached us with stories of how she'd cooked for them through pregnancy, illness, financial hardship—the list seemed endless. I was stunned. I'd always experienced Achchi's food as a warm embrace, but had naively never recognized how, for her, cooking transcended being merely a labor of love. It was her way of creating safe spaces, offering support, and weaving together a community of women. I see it in my mother now, as she carries on my grandmother's legacy through food. Women everywhere create community this way—trading ingredients, sharing homemade pickles, kimchi or jams, exchanging recipes, and little tips to make a dish better. These seemingly small acts have become an intrinsic part of how we build communities.
I loved the Chef’s Table episode featuring Asma Khan. A simple invitation to tea extended to other South Asian women in her neighbourhood grew into friendships that formed the foundation for the Darjeeling Express, a London restaurant run entirely by an all-women team. Through cooking, she not only built community but also created safe spaces where women could find genuine connections and engage with cooking as an art form.
"There is no success that I could have had in my life that goes anywhere close to how I felt seeing these women break their chains … Coming from nothing, from memories of hunger and deprivation, huge racism… They were free, and this, I think, is the reason why we are successful. You feel that power when you come into my restaurant. It's the Shakti [cosmic energy] and the strength of women. You'll see every woman is laughing and smiling. Because for them this is not a job. This is liberation." from Asma Khan, a force for women in Food
Women build community through cooking and food, from kitty parties to book clubs to mahila samithi meetings - across diverse social classes and geographies, but it doesn’t stop there. Food is also an integral part of social movements and activism. Lola Oluefemi writes about the role of food in shaping radical social movements in her article Hungry Work. She explores how community kitchens and shared meals create spaces for those who believe in freedom to speak to each other and think critically about their sociopolitical landscapes. I also recommend reading this beautiful living etymology of cooking by Dr Anna Sulan Masing about women-led networks that nourish, support and fuel solidarity. In Sri Lanka, Dabindu Collective and other women’s organisations, similar to the movements Olufemi and Masing describe, demonstrate how community kitchens can serve as both safe spaces and powerful tools for grassroots organizing. By leveraging these spaces, they mobilize women workers and activists, fostering solidarity and collective action.
(Photos from the Archive Dabindu Collective)
The kitchen is undeniably a political space where women negotiate gendered expectations and personal agency, finding moments of joy, resistance, and community. From home cooks to professional chefs, from diaspora communities to activist circles, cooking reveals itself as a powerful language through which women express identity, build solidarity, and challenge oppressive systems. This dialogue represents an ongoing process of understanding, challenging, and reshaping the complex social narratives that surround women's relationships with cooking.
Other resources
Film and Television
Mrs the Bollywood remake of The Great Indian Kitchen (although we prefer the Malayalam original)
Chef’s Table: Season 3: Episode 1 “Korean nun”
Photo Archive from Dabindu Collective
Other writing and studies
From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives On Women and Food by Arlene Voski Avakian and Barbara Haber
"Kneading Politics": Cookery and the American Woman Suffrage Movement by Jessica Derleth
Is Michael Pollan a sexist pig? by Emily Matchar
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Thadini is a graduate from the University of Kelaniya, with an English Honors degree. Having always had a keen eye for social injustice, Thadini is driven towards creating safe spaces for minorities. This is evidenced in her dissertation research, which focuses on understanding the experiences of neurodivergent students in education and recognizing the need to create inclusive education practices in Sri Lanka. Presently, she is the Outreach program manager at Everystory Sri Lanka. Thadini aspires to continue on her journey of creating social equality and equity by delving deeper into the field of sustainable development as a career path.