Working in the Kitchen: Is it Truly Work for Women?

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Working in the kitchen: Is it truly work for women?
The contemporary society has been conditioned, especially in traditional families, to follow the gender roles, particularly regarding the work that needs to be done at home, resulting in gender inequities. Specifically, in the Western culture, the household chores are typically linked to femininity as these are believed to be the work of someone organized but “vulnerable” at the same time, who cannot do the typical “macho work (Cerrato et al.; Harris and Giuffre).” This belief and observation in many societies or communities have been debunked by my personal experience while working at the campus kitchen, wherein, while the contemporary society expects that women will do volunteer work over men in the campus kitchen, the result was vice-versa; and this demonstrates that the stereotype has been gradually being challenged by the young in the contemporary society.
Gender ideology refers to the specific beliefs and values appropriate for each gender, limited to only two, males and females, and these guide each individual on how to think and act in a particular society. The values will tell the others if such actions are proper in a specific situation (Cerrato et al.). In the United States, deviant people with such beliefs and values become marginalized, and they now belong to the group marked as “queer.” Although this has been used as a derogatory term for a long time, this term has been used to describe marginalized people and even societies that do not follow a specific norm. An example of this is the people who do not follow the gender stereotypes, which are not limited to the LGBTQPAI+ but also applicable to heterosexuals (Saraswati, Shaw, and Rellihan 15).
In the case of household chores, this has been linked to femininity or “vulnerability” due to the domination of patriarchal ideologies in many, if not all, of the countries worldwide (Saraswati, Shaw, and Rellihan 14). Patriarchy tells the people that men are strong and women are weak, and thus, men should lead and women should become subordinate. An example of this is how Ijeoma, in her personal piece, “Because You’re a Girl,” explained how she grew accustomed to her family that embraced traditional customs. The author iterated that a good woman should follow the Four Commandments to become an excellent candidate for marriage. These include the following: First, the kitchen is the woman’s “office.” Second, the woman should do all the household chores. Third, the woman should raise the children (alone) and guide them to become the persons they want to be in the future. And lastly, the woman should completely surrender and follow the man’s lead (Saraswati, Shaw, and Rellihan 16).
However, based on personal experience at the kitchen campus, these ideologies have been challenged by today’s youth. When volunteer work opened, it was presumed that more female students would volunteer than male st...