In Chapter four of Rodger Streitmatter’s Voices of Revolution titled “Promoting Free Love in the Victorian Age,” Rodger explores gender roles in marriage. In the 1860s, The Revolution questioned the institution of marriage. They called themselves free lovers because they believed that a marriage should solely be based on love. They did not think that a woman’s identity should only be based on her relationship with her husband. They wanted women to thrive independently without limitations that gender imposed.
Gender equality is a topic that is widely discussed today. In Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s infamous TED talk, she shines light on the issue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc). She talks specifically about her African heritage where gender is treated as a binary. She recalls a time when she handed money to a valet parker in Lagos and instead of thanking her, the beggar looking to her male friend and thanked him. He assumed that she had not earned the money she was handing him. He believed that whatever money she did have was given to her by a man. The problem, Adichie states, is that men usually do not actively think about gender. The valet parker naturally assumed that the money was not hers because he was raised to think this way. This is where Adichie raises a solution. She says that in order to change the way we think of gender we must unlearn what we naturally learned was the norm.
When my mother was seven years old in the Dominican Republic, she already knew how to cook. Often times she cooked arroz con habichuelas for twenty people. As a girl, she was taught that cooking was her duty. Adichie makes an enlightening statement about this in her TED talk. She says,
I know a family that have both a son and a daughter, both of whom are brilliant at school, who are wonderful, lovely children. When the boy is hungry, the parents say to the girl, “Go and cook Indomie noodles for your brother.” Now the daughter doesn’t particularly like to cook Indomie noodles, but she’s a girl, and so she has to. Now what if the parents, from the beginning, taught both the boy and the girl to cook indomie? Cooking, by the way, is a very useful skill for boys to have. I’ve never thought it made sense to leave such a crucial thing, the ability to nourish oneself, in the hands of others.
In my family, my mother does most of the cooking. Because my father works and my mother doesn’t, she’s claimed it to be her responsibility to cook for her family. Granted, my mother is a fantastic cook and she loves cooking for us. I think it’s okay if a woman happens to do more of the “feminine” tasks in a relationship, as long as it’s not treated as her duty as a woman to do so. At first glance, my parent’s marriage may seem conventional like the marriages Streitmatter discusses in his book. But they have one of the most nurturing and supportive relationships I’ve ever seen. My father actively acknowledges that my mother cooks and he thanks her after each meal, knowing that she doesn’t have to cook for us. And she knows this too. On weekends my father sometimes cooks one of the very few meals he does know how to make. He makes an elaborate dinner with lobster and we are all very grateful. He also constantly urges my mother to open up her own restaurant. I think a lot of gender equality has to do with seeing conventionality but not succumbing to its stereotypes-- My mother cooks but my father doesn’t accept her to do so because of her gender. But sometimes I wonder if my mother in fact does feel like cooking is something she needs to do. Adichie says, “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man.” Sometimes when we talk about my mother opening a restaurant, she’s always unsure if it will work out. She says “Restaurants are hard work.” I know this. But I also want her to know that cooking is something she can make a living out of, instead of only applying the skill in a domestic atmosphere. I also know that if anyone is capable to run a business it’s my mother. She is stronger and more passionate than most men I know today. I hope my mother is not afraid of having ambition. And I hope that she will one day find herself more than capable to do something she loves.
Adichie believes we should unlearn gender conventions we were taught at a young age. And we should teach both boys and girls activities that have been mostly acquired by females. A few months ago, I went to dinner with a man. I’m not sure how we came upon the subject, but at one point he asked if I knew how to cook. And I said “Not at all” and he said, “What will you do when you have a husband?” I was completely stunned by his question. It’s not that this man is usually rude, it’s just that he isn’t actively thinking about gender. He grew up to learn that men inherit responsibility while women inherit domesticity. His father owns restaurants around the world, and when it was time for his father to retire, the responsibilities were passed down to him. He will most likely grow up as the provider of his family.
I think we have a lot more work to do in our quest for gender equality. We have to unlearn what we know and we have to teach children differently. We need more women and men like the writers in free-loving revolutionary newspapers to make us active thinkers and question why things are the way they are.
