Cooking as a Social Function Essay -- Women Economics Culture Essays

Cooking as a Social Function In Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins Gilman directly addressed the notion of work divided along sexual lines. Her analysis, however, refutes the modern idea that the sexual divisions of labor are driven by a comparative advantage to working in the household or in the market. In spite of some overtones of biological essentialism in her argument, in the form of the abundant nature metaphors, Gilman ultimately proposed a society where the household work and the market are indistinguishable from one another. Though it is a small part of her argument in the text, Gilman’s discussion of cooking as woman’s work encompasses much of the complexity and the essence of her arguments. Gilman, though she did not term it as such, addressed the idea of comparative advantages in the household rather directly. â€Å"The main justification for the subjection of women, which is commonly advanced, is the alleged advantage to motherhood resultant from her extreme specialization to the uses of maternity under this condition† (Gilman 169). She countered this argument by first rejecting it on the ground that â€Å"the advantage to motherhood cannot be proved† and secondly by arguing that it is not maternal tasks that women are subjected to, but rather â€Å"the uses of sex-indulgence† (169). This idea of â€Å"sex-indulgence† is the core of her argument as she sees household tasks as inherently conflated with men and women’s sexual relationships. In considering the issue of â€Å"our division of labor on sex-lines, Gilman focused on the complexities involved with â€Å"the preparation and serving of food† (225). Once the notion that women are somehow inherently better at making food than men, the idea of women cooking in the ho... ...still has some choice in selecting the particular establishment to live in, it removes much of the onus of responsibility off of the woman and onto the living establishment. While Gilman’s vision of what she saw as coming to pass in the near future has not yet arrived, her arguments are still operating against contemporary notions of women in the household. Modern microeconomic models of household production still rely on the idea that women are somehow biologically fitted to â€Å"the preparation and serving of food and the removal of dirt, [and] the nutritive and execrative processes† (Gilman 225). As a result, her arguments seem striking over a century since they were written. References Gilman, C. (1998). Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.