“Women belong in the kitchen” is a phrase designed to keep women in (what is assumed to be) their place. It is obviously meant to insult them and diminish the value they bring to society. But do you know what else this sentiment inadvertently undervalues? The kitchen.
Everybody loves the kitchen, why wouldn’t we? It’s where the food is. It’s also the nexus that pulls a home together, which is why it’s believed that kitchens are the “heart of the home.” They’re the capital of the household that has the power to bring together communities towards mobilizing in the name of justice. That’s why we wanted to discuss women’s economic empowerment in a kitchen setting.
Yes, the idea behind Global Citizen’s most recent social media video series titled: Woman In The Kitchen (where the host bakes a dessert in a 1950s-style kitchen while discussing the gender income gap and the need for economic justice between the sexes) is meant to be satire. It’s meant to highlight that we, as a society, should have moved way past the days when women were confined to the kitchen, invisible and unheard.
However, the kitchen setting for the series does more than help to amplify irony — it was chosen to demonstrate that women being sentenced to kitchen imprisonment by the patriarchy does not limit their potential for excellence nor their need for economic and social liberation.
In fact, placing women in the kitchen has elevated the role of the kitchen to one of the most powerful places in a home. A place where food is made and domestic duties are performed, but also a place where revolutionary ideas can be born. Put women wherever you want to put them, and they’ll no doubt exceed expectations.
In 1980, Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith gathered a group of women of color to discuss a pressing issue — the lack of representation in publications. At the time, women of color (particularly those in academia) struggled to have their works published, often relegated to small special editions of white publications. The group decided that it was time to create their own publication called ‘Kitchen Table: Woman Of Color Press’. It was a publication dedicated to printing the works of women of color at a time when these same women were told to be silent in the face of oppression.
Of the name, Smith said: “...the kitchen is the center of the home, the place where women in particular work and communicate with each other. We also wanted to convey the fact that we are a kitchen table, grassroots organization, begun and kept alive by women who cannot rely on inheritances or other benefits of class privilege to do the work that we do.”
‘Kitchen Table: Women Of Color Press’ ran from 1981 until 1992, transforming the literary landscape for all women in the United States. The kitchen should not be undervalued if a mere piece of furniture inside it could inspire the transformation of an entire literary landscape, imagine what else is possible. Later, Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, praised the kitchen as a place for uniting communities and ideating over advocacy.
The argument here is not that women actually do belong in the kitchen, but rather that women shouldn’t be underestimated. The kitchen is not the prison that the patriarchy imagined it would be, largely because the society that coined the phrase failed to grasp what women could actually accomplish in a kitchen.
In Global Citizen’s 1950s kitchen, we have a woman whipping up a tray of brownies or baking pumpkin pie as she discusses the global gender wealth gap and the lack of economic growth for women overall. The hope is to educate you, our audience of action-takers, on the many injustices that women face today, particularly regarding leadership positions and economic opportunities.
In this series we look at four areas in which women’s economic participation is undervalued.
We consider African women’s lack of access to capital and funding for their business ventures in the first episode…
….dip our toe into the very large and crucial topic of gendered unpaid care work in the second…
….discuss the need to appreciate women in health care in the third…
….and finally, call for more women to take up leadership space in the technology industry in the fourth and final episode.
With each episode, a well-established expert guest speaker (also a woman) provides additional context to enrich the topic. Lydia Charle Moyo, Founder and Executive Director at Her Initiative, adds her expertise to the first; Vanessa Bracetty-Ormsby, founder of Expecting Relief, chimes in on the second; Associate Professor Dr Esmita Charani from the University of Cape Town adds value to the third; and Cisco’s Senior Director for Africa, Charmaine Houvet, delivers the final word in the fourth.
All four episodes are available now on all of our social media platforms.