| Earlier this week, a short video clip showing a woman giving up the food on her plate for an otherwise engrossed partner evinced sharp reactions on social media. Are women naturally inclined to make sacrifices for their families or is this a result of social conditioning? Read on... The Big Story Born to serve? How patriarchy rules in the kitchen  Representational Image (Source:Pexel) A conversation I had many years ago with a friend, the wife of a doctor, about the intricacies of fish curry has stayed with me for years. My friend was explaining to non-fish-eating me that the tail (sheput) is considered the best and fleshiest part. On her dining table, my friend told me, that piece was reserved not for her husband or son, but her daughter. “When she gets married, she may never get to eat it,” she told me. It was heart-breaking on so many levels. The expectation that women must make big and tiny sacrifices for their families. The fact that regardless of who ate it, the wife, who had likely cooked it, was not going to get the best piece. And that so many of these sacrifices actually take place in the kitchen, which in most households is a feminine domain. The sacrificing wife On social media, a short reel showing a couple at a meal went viral with 13 million views this past week. Utterly engrossed on his phone, the man gestures to his thaali for a second helping. But the serving dish is empty. So the wife scoops up the rice on her plate, pretends to be taking it from the serving dish and places it on her partner’s plate. He doesn’t even notice. She smiles blissfully. SheThePeople TV reported that the clip had been uploaded on Instagram by an account that goes by @tims_island, Timsy Jain an influencer with 229,000 followers (though I could not find it on her timeline). Her bio describes her as a “digital creator” and “full time mom”. A message sent by me to her went unanswered. Social media was divided in response. Some lauded the enactment as a shining example of how women manage their homes. But a vast majority were offended. “How do we brainwash women so much that they end up smiling when their partners treat them with utter neglect and disrespect?” huffed one commentator. “He should have been sprayed in the face with the kitchen faucet.” Clocking out Earlier this year in January, journalist and author Nilanjana Bhowmik wroe an opinion piece for The Guardian on how she was cancelling festivals because of the load it put on her in ensuring everyone else had a good time. Many of us, she wrote, “Have grown up with our mothers slaving in the kitchen, cooking and baking, gathering family and friends together and nurturing them, writing those endless Christmas cards and New Year letters, buying gifts. But are their smiles really beatific—or have we been socialised to just see the smile and not the weariness underneath it?” No festival is complete without its feasting. But who cooks the elaborate, labour-intensive feast? Do women really love taking care of friends and families. Sure, writes Bhowmik, but “no more or less than a man”. But women alone have “acquired this image of thriving on caring for people around them. It’s a myth…so they have no choice but to grin and bear it.” Eating last, and least It is no secret that women eat last and least in much of the world. When conditions are tough—famine, conflict, the pandemic—women end up going to bed hungrier. Of the 690 million food insecure people in the world, 60% are women and in nearly two-thirds of countries, women are more likely than men to report food insecurity, finds the World Food Programme. Analysis by CARE finds a link between gender inequality and food insecurity; across 109 countries it found that the greater the gender inequality, the lower the food security. When 150 million more women than men went hungry in 2021, do we really want to continue to glorify the idea of the happily self-sacrificing woman? | 
