Gender and Children’s Food Practices: A Qualitative Study of 12–14-Year-Old Children in A Danish School Setting

ABSTRACT

In this article, we will focus on gender and food among children in Danish home economics classes—more specifically, children aged 12–14 (6th and 7th graders in the Danish school). The aim of the study is to investigate whether the traditional gender representations found in studies of children’s food media are replicated in children’s food practices in a school setting. The article concludes that gender is not as manifest as other studies have indicated, notably those on media representations of children and food. This is not to say that gender distinctions were absent but that they were expressed in more subtle ways. Also, the article highlights the importance of paying attention to different kinds of food practices, and how they might be gendered differently by the same subjects. The article calls for more research in the field and more broadly on the complex relationship between gendered media representation and social practices in everyday life.

KEYWORDS:

• Food and gender
• children
• cooking
• home economics
• school
• gender and media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The term foodie is often attributed to The Official Foodie Handbook by Paul Levy and Ann Bar. They famously define a foodie as a person who is “very, very, very interested in food”, but the term also seems to designate a more modern and globalized culinary identity than the French centred gourmet or epicure described in La physiologie du goût (1825) by Jean A. Brillat-Savarin. Concerning the concept foodie and foodie culture, see Johnston and Baumann (2010).

2. For a more comprehensive description on the method, the methodology, and reflections on the advantages and drawbacks on this kind of research, see Krogager et al. (in press).

3. In relation to ethical considerations on researching on/with children we followed the guidelines presented in Kampmann (2003). We had obtained consent from all parents through the schools and distributed a description of the project. The parents were given the option of saying “no” on behalf of their children. All names are changed, and all persons and institutions are anonymized. See also Povlsen et al. (in press) for expanded reflections on the ethical considerations of doing this kind of research.

4. We were rather ambivalent about creating a competitive setting, but it worked well in engaging the children (see Krogager et al. in press).

5. The teachers had sometimes problems stepping back; see Povlsen, Krogager, Leer, Højlund. (in press). This paper also discusses differences in the schools and the children in term of socio-economics, geography, and digital skills.

6. Homosociality designates a sociality with persons of the same sex and in relation to food studied in gastronomic restaurants (Neuman & Christina, 2014), among American-Italian men (Naccarato, 2012), and in food television (Leer, 2016b).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Nordea-fonden [Smag for Livet].

Notes on contributors

Jonatan Leer

Dr. Jonatan Leer is head of food and tourism research at University College Absalon, Roskilde. He has published widely on food culture, notably on the new Nordic cuisine and the gendering of food practices, in journals such as Food, Culture and Society, Food and Foodways, European Journal of Cultural Studies and Feminist Review.

Jonatan has written three books and edited the book Food and Media (Routledge 2016) and contributed to Food and Age in Europe (Routledge 2019), Alternative Food Politics (Routledge 2018), Food and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury 2017) and Food, Masculinities, Home (Bloomsbury 2017). Jonatan is visiting lecturer at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, and member of the Danish gastronomic academy.

Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager

Dr. Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University. She has published on children, food, gender, and methodologies in e.g. Critical Food Studies, Trends in Food Science & Technology and Nordicom Review, also, she is Editor in Chief at the Nordic Journal, MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research.

Karen Klitgaard Povlsen

Dr. Karen Klitgaard Povlsen is Senior Lecturer and Emerita Associate Professor in Media Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. Her research interest has for decades been media contents and ordinary people’s use of media content, not least food. She has published on food in magazines; television series, gender, and food; body ideals and gender; media practices in relation to food on digital platforms; trust and credibility in food and organic labeling. A recent publication is Food and Media, co-edited with Dr. Jonatan Leer, Routledge 2016; Food as performance: From Stilleben to Photography, in Eat Me, Trapholt 2017; the chapter ‘Food in a Life time Span’ in Food and Old Age, ed. C. Nyvang et al. 2018. Forthcoming is a chapter on ‘Food and Media as Material Culture’, in Material Culture Studies, ed. I Michalache, Bloomsbury Academic 2020.

Susanne Højlund

Dr. Susanne Højlund is associate professor of anthropology at Aarhus University, and head of the interdisciplinary centre Food Culture Studies (FOCUS). She has done fieldwork in Denmark and Cuba within childhood, welfare and food studies. She is part of the Centre Taste for Life, and has published several works on taste. She is working with experimental and visual anthropology, and has experience as a filmmaker.