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Are Feminism and Slow Food Incompatible?
Shopping at the farmers’ markets and making food from scratch are important tenets of the local/ethical/slow foods lifestyle, but are they fundamentally incompatible with a career? What about the timesaving kitchen shortcuts (read: packaged prepared foods) that have allowed women to balance careers along with kitchen and family? Can you both work and make your own jam? These are questions that Jennifer Jeffrey asks in a thought-provoking blog post called “The Feminist in My Kitchen.”
I wonder if our little blogsphere sits here debating the provenance of our nectarines while the larger community of women … head out to work feeling more guilty than ever before, as the mountain of expectations and unattainable standards grows ever higher.
Can we call ourselves feminists … and still suggest that an ideal dinner consists of handmade ravioli and slow-simmered marinara from vine-ripened, hand-picked tomatoes and a salad composed of vegetables that (let’s be honest) are Not Available at Safeway?Ladies, when we cluck our tongues at drive-through lanes and packaged convenience food, we are forgetting that convenience has been our friend.
As Jennifer points out, “The fact that women hold more executive positions than at any other time in history, and can freely choose any career path they like is in no small part due to the prevalence of supermarkets and the availability of easy-to-prepare foodstuffs.”
It’s a fascinating post—worth reading in its entirety, as well as the succeeding comments (not surprisingly, people have opinions). The question she asks might as well be applied to all people who work: How do we both scale the career heights and bake our own bread (from locally and organically grown heritage wheat bought at the farmers’ market, of course)?
Posted by | Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 10:01am | 12 comments
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This isn't even remotely a feminist issue. The feminist issue is that for some reason you are still expected to cook dinner.
Otherwise, it's just an issue as to whether someone who works an 8 hour day with a 1 hour commute has time to participate in the slow food movement. Convenience food has been a friend to the employer pushing the 40 hour work week to the 50+ hour work week. One could make a pretty accurate statement that the entire Internet has been built completely thanks to the availability of convenience food.
So if this is an issue for you, you need to deal with the question of equity in the kitchen. Then we can talk about whether the slow food movement is sane.
So true. The fact that they're even framing this as a feminist issue just shows that our culture still considers feeding the family to be by default the woman's responsibility, even when she's working as many hours outside the home as her male partner. If a man does the cooking, everyone thinks that's admirable, that he's helping out in the kitchen, while when a woman cooks, it's just part of what's expected of her.
I agree, Convenience food has allowed woman to join the work force while still maintaining her "responsibilty" to provide a hot nuitrious meal for her family. In modern day, however, I think it is time we re-examine how we think about who and how dinner is provided to our families. With both parents working away from the home, its hard to imagine why this chore is still left to women. Should our families miss out on the quality and nuitriton of the foods they recieve because there simply enough hours in a day for one person to do everything?
Heres a simple idea to think about:
During World War I, as all able men were away at war, women were recruited to the factories to work, most full time. As the women were away from home, unable to prepare meals, and this was a time without the convience foods, most of the factories provided a hot, cooked meal that women would leave work with, to take home to serve their families...
now if we could figure out a solution like this in the 1920's, why in the era of convenience is this issue so difficult?
I agree w/ TThomas48--is this primarily a feminist issue or an economic issue? Seems to me the problem lies first with a corporation-driven society that pushes its members to work so hard, so long that the thought of ANYONE, M or F, making dinner from scratch seems old-fashioned.
Sexism emerges when the presumption is that slow food is for women because they're the ones cooking.
The larger problem is that our society worships consumption and image. Many men and women work more hours than they need to so they can by stuff they don't really need.
Signed,
Guy who likes to cook and spend time with his family and believes in the mission of Slow Food
I think you also do the best you can, as the original article states. I work full time, have a business on the side, and all that, but I still do the most I can. I get to the farmer's market once a week, knowing how lucky I am to be in SoCal, and I keep it simple. I try to use as few convenience foods as possible, and rely on fresh produce, simply prepared meats (as clean and local as I can find), and dairy from a local producer who refuses to use hormones. For me, involved cooking happens on weekends or holidays and vacations. And we do eat out a few times a week, and try to stay away from fast food. But, the trick is to do the best you can, and be happy that you're doing something. My partner would love to raise all our food, but, we've both gotta work. I tell her that shopping at the farmer's market keeps these small farmers in business. As for the feminism issue, I think that's separate. I do remember in both my marriages, that housework was uneven, but I attribute that to poor husband selection on my part. I've managed to raise an 18 yo boy who cooks dinner for his friends. I think a shift in society will happen one household at a time. Most of my friends don't do what I do. But they occasionally ask questions. Little by little.
As a student, I juggle classes and an internship with the challenge of eating decently. It's hard, but I'm always thankful that I don't have to feed anyone else. Part of the problem for my mother is that she took the responsibility for everyone's food, even when my sister and I were old enough to cook...we won't even discuss the lazy father issue. Suffice to say, I think fathers everywhere need to get in the kitchen!
The consequences? An overburdened mother who hated cooking and me, well...I never really learned how to cook. I had to pay for cooking classes even though I was raised by parents with the same knowledge. I ate out a lot my first year of college and suffered the consequences.
Yes, young children can't cook, but having everyone involved with buying and preparing food takes off a huge burden and allows children to learn skills that are invaluable later in life.
But for me, I just usually don't have time to cook fancy food. Thankfully healthy food doesn't have to be fancy. I pick up the staples by spending an hour at the farmer's market and either eat things raw or cook them lightly. Occasionally I do rely on prepared food, but I try to be conscious of what I buy. Prepared food isn't bad because it's prepared-- if it's bad it is because of what it was prepared with!
A woman with a career outside the home is not the definition of feminist.
If fresh food matters to you, you will make time for it. It is not important to the woman in that article.
As mentioned in the article the circumstances of a career woman varies widely from a 20 year out out of college to a woman with a family to older women whose families are gone to women who choose not to marry .
I always loved farmers markets long before the slow food movement was a twinkle in anyones eye.
Every weekend I made time for the farmers market ... from my college days through early career through a rise up the corporate ladder to taking care of an aging parent that usually left me with 2 hours of sleep.
My time at the market was a refuge and some down time. I rarely missed it. If i cooked, it was once a week and frozen.
The better salary later in life just meant I had more disposable income to buy organic and eat more often at restaurants like Chez Panisse.
So I would say yes ... slow food and the writers definition of feminism are entirely compatable ... you have more money to afford it ... or to hire a cook to do the shopping for you .
Right...I don't see it as a feminist issue, but it is a question of compatibility of slow food and career success. Doing the best you can seems like a good solution and would still make a difference in the global food supply. Two adjustments to improve the ability of hard working women and men who want slow food:
Grow your own fruits and vegetables when and where you can, even if it's potted herbs it makes a difference.
Shorten your commute. I know that's not an easy one to tackle, but if you have an hour-long commute, that's 10 hours for an 8 hour day of work. A fifteen or twenty minute commute should allow an extra hour in your day for preparing a slow food dinner.
slow food isn't just the food, it's the daily routine and priorities
...and I don't think you need a large salary to afford slow food
I think you missed my point, rworange. The point isn't that the writer is right or wrong about the conflict between slow food and the demands of people who work, it's that the writer defines this as a feminist issue because the writer still perceives cooking as "women's work." It's that perception that women are still the default family cooks, even when they're working outside the home as many hours as their male partners, that we're objecting to.
In other words, why is the conflict between slow food and the demands of the modern economy specifically deemed by the writer a feminist issue, and not simply a philosophical or economic issue for anyone interested in food? And if the writer is correct that this "conflict" is a feminist issue because it mainly affects working women, then what does that say about how little the roles of women have really changed?
Just to muddy the water a little bit more, this is also a class issue. For the least affluent members of our society, access to transportation or ANY kind of supermarket, let alone a Trader Joe's or a farmer's market, is a dream. "Slow Food" implies a choice that a lot of people don't have the option of. Fast food and prepackaged conventience foods are the only option.
Solving those issues is a lot more complicated than arguing over who should do the cooking.