Cooking up religion: women, culture and culinary power

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how religious sensibilities intersect with the gendering of food preparation in diverse cultures. My own fieldwork with Kurdish Israeli women as well as ethnographic research from other parts of the world reveals both patterns and variations in women’s ambiguous power as food-preparers. Women often predominate in food preparation activities and expertise and cooked foods tend to carry existential and symbolic meaning. However, the realm of the existential and symbolic (that is; “religion”) tends to be dominated by men. Drawing on examples from Italy, New Zealand, Belize, Greece, India, Iran and elsewhere, I explore ways in which women’s food preparation bridges human and divine, sacred and profane, self and community, and both strengthens and challenges gender hierarchies.

KEYWORDS:

• Ritual cooking
• gender and religion
• symbolic foods
• women and ritual
• cooking magic

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Francine Markowitz and Nir Avieli for cooking up the workshop that gave rise to this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Numerous psychological, symbolic, biological and historical theories have been proposed to explain the widespread presence of menstrual taboos. I am most persuaded by the argument that menstrual stigmas and prohibitions serve to naturalize social ideologies of male superiority, limit women’s access to public spaces and roles, and transfer control over reproduction to men (cf. Knight 1995).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan Sered

Susan Sered is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Suffolk University. Her publications include the book Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem.