Pickles, Pies and Blue-Ribbon Gender Roles

It’s State Fair season! That means it’s time for deep-fried Oreos, the manure toss, aging entertainers, and butter sculptures. Apparently it’s also time for sex-segregated cooking and baking competitions:

“We learned that men wanted to enter in baking but were intimidated by the skills of the regular competitors,� said Lyn Jarvis, culinary supervisor of the Champlain Valley Fair in Vermont, which offered its first men-only contest in 1990. “Now they are winning best in show ribbons.�

“Regular competitors” = women.

Guy-friendly cooking contests have also begun padding the entertainment schedule at many fairs. Formal judging of canned and baked goods often takes place out of the spotlight, or before a fair begins, but chicken wing cook-offs and barbecue contests have been accepted as spectator sports.

So let’s get this straight. Now that cooking is no longer simply a survival skill, it’s seen as an art. Which means it’s no longer strictly housework… which means it’s now socially acceptable for men to participate. And if we’re talking about a type of cooking that’s stereotypically done by men (grilling, for example), then it’s not only an art, but a spectator sport. Nobody’s holding an Iron Chef-style pie-making competition.
Interesting. Especially because certain professional kitchens come with a glass ceiling for women: female chefs hold less than 4 percent of the top jobs in the US.