Scroll down your Instagram feed and it’s almost a guaranteed sight; the seen-too-often snapshot of food prepared by a girl, captioned something along the lines of “wifey status” or “wife me up.” Though it may seem lighthearted, it’s actually harmful and especially worrisome considering how it’s rarely even questioned. Rather than being about survival, the joy of cooking, or the love of food, the preparation of food is linked instead to pleasing men, and perpetuates enduring, patriarchal, and archaic gender roles. Additionally, linking women to the domestic space enforces the notion of gendered spheres, tying women to the home space and domesticating them while their husbands are out in the “real world.”
Perpetuating that women should remain at home and that cooking is a “wifely” duty contributes to the myth that women are not meant to be in the workplace, or are less effective in the workplace than men. This notion is manifested by the wage gap: since the 1990’s, the average woman earns 71% of a man’s wage for the same work. In 2011, women made $32,100 compared to the $48,100 made by men (Statistics Canada). This is not to say that cooking should be a man’s job, or that the work-life-balance-conflict is only a woman’s issue. However, as women already face adversity, reproductive differences from men that can hinder their careers, and prejudice, the last thing we need is to enforce gender roles that impede progress in achieving equality.
Attaching the label of “wife” to images of food and women who cook also creates categories of women who are “worthy” or “unworthy” of being a wife. Lest we forget that a marriage is a partnership, not a privilege earned by a woman who cooks and clean. Labelling some women as worthy of being a “wife” in contrast to others who are not, classifies women based on the perceived desired traits of a partner. That being said, these desired traits are often antiquated: a woman who can cook is valued over a woman who goes out with her friends. This way of thinking strips women of their agency, and subjects their life choices to be dictated by men in order to be perceived as “marriage material.”
In Canada, women made up 47.3% of the labour force in 2014, a number that has come a long way from the 37.1% proportion of 1976 (Statistics Canada). Though women compose almost half of the labour force, notions that they should for some reason be “in the kitchen” are perpetuated constantly by society, and as a result, by our own doing. Women do not need to be condemned for labelling themselves as “wife material,” because the tendency is the result of a lifetime of social conditioning. The mentality that women are less fit for careers, or they have to “do it all” and achieve domestic perfection if they do have careers is so deeply engrained that it manifests itself on macro-levels (the wage gap, for example) and on micro-scales (the dreaded Instagram caption).
That being said, think twice before you post that Valencia-filtered picture of salmon, and choose a caption that contributes to outmoded gender conventions.