Gender in Recipes: A Look at the Food Network's Top Chefs

Abstract

Food preparation has long been a gendered activity, where women prepare daily meals for their families and men consider cooking optional or even a fun hobby. Food too has gendered connotations that men and women carry out. The Food Network, a channel dedicated entirely to the preparation and consumption of food is an interesting site in which to analyze gender in food and food preparation. Because recipes are templates for what foods to use and how to prepare them, they provide a generous location in which to analyze gendered cooking. For my research, I collected a sample of the top 100 recipes on the website from 8 of the top chefs on the Food Network. From these recipes I analyzed gendered variables such as type of meat used, cooking time, type of dish and number of ingredients. I found that the recipes presented by the chefs on the Food Network tend to reinforce gender stereotypes, rather than challenge them.