Women, food, and families / Nickie Charles and Marion Kerr.
- Nickie Charles
- Date:
- [1988]
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Credit: Women, food, and families / Nickie Charles and Marion Kerr. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![72 Women, food and families If I cook something that's got a whiff of herbs in it or something he'll put his knife and fork down and say, 'I'm sorry but I'm not eating it'. Occasionally he'll get through it but I have known him to refuse to eat it and maybe go and have a biscuit or a piece of cake instead. [How do you feel about that?] Not very happy. He usually waits until my parents come and I've prepared something a bit out of the ordinary and he'll leave it. I'm not happy but there again I'll not make a scene, I'm not one for rowing - I'll go off and have a little weep to myself. It's all over, I mean we never argue much about anything like that and then he'll probably say sorry and eat it next time but the next time I know better and don't put it in you know. It should be said that it was not a majority of the men in the sample who had at one time or another refused food: 130 (65%) had never refused food or had only refused it if they had been ill. However, this does not necessarily mean that they will eat anything they are presented with: it often means that their partners have very successfully adapted the diet to their preferences as this woman told us. I cook what I know he will like. Even if I cook something different I make sure the basic food is what he likes. I mean I don't try things knowing he won't like them. Things like pasta I know he won't eat that, so I don't cook it. But he's never actually refused anything. He might get it thrown at him if he did. There were, in fact, no reported instances of women throwing food at men, but a small number of the women reported that their husbands had thrown food at them if it hadn't met with their approval. This violent rejection of food was an extreme reaction, but it underlines the relations of power which underlie the gender division of food provision. Women within this relation are subservient and subordinate, they are the servers and providers of food for men. We will quote at length from one of the women's accounts as it gives a very clear picture of the power relations governing food provision. During this inter¬ view both husband and wife were present. The husband began by saying: There was once where you made something I didn't like - I remember that. Wife: 'Oh yes, I forgot about that.' Husband: 'Yeah - But apart from a broken plate and a rather dirty wall there was no other damage.'](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18028706_0085.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
