Cooking up religion: women, culture and culinary power

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.