GENDER AND FOOD LABOUR: INVISIBLE LABOUR IN THE KITCHEN AND THE GENDERED DIVISION OF FOOD WORK IN URBAN FAMILIES

Description

Globalization, Food Systems, and Legal Responses:Governance, Justice, and Sustainability in a Changing World
Edited By: Dr. Joydeb Patra, Ms. Saptaparni Raha
E-ISBN: 978-81-685212-2-3

Food labour—encompassing the planning, procurement, preparation, serving, and emotional management of meals within households—constitutes one of the most fundamental yet persistently invisible forms of domestic work in contemporary society. This paper critically examines the gendered organization of food labour within urban Indian families, arguing that domestic food work must be understood as a form of reproductive labour that is central to sustaining households, reproducing labour power, maintaining patriarchal family structures, and supporting capitalist economies. Drawing on feminist, Marxist, socialist, radical, and intersectional theoretical frameworks, the paper demonstrates that the invisibility of food labour is not incidental but structurally embedded within historically gendered divisions of labour that continue to shape household organization in urban India. Even within dual-income, technologically modern urban households, women continue to perform the overwhelming majority of physical, cognitive, and emotional food work. The paper pays particular attention to the role of caste and class in organizing food labour within the Indian context, the emergence of a compounded “double burden” for professional women, and the ways in which digital food platforms and consumer technologies reorganize rather than eliminate women’s domestic responsibilities. By locating kitchen work within wider systems of gender, capitalism, and social reproduction, the study renders visible the hidden labour that sustains everyday social life while remaining largely unrecognized within dominant economic and sociological frameworks.