Living in a Male Dominated Kitchen

I found these articles very interesting because they talk about how women are thought of as the ones who cook for the family.  The Bellows article actually reports that women engage in grocery shopping and cooking more than men.  This has always intrigued me because I grew up in a household where my father did most of the cooking and my parents shopped for groceries equally.  Growing up, my dad would either work in the morning or the evening and that usually determined what we would eat.  If he worked the morning, he would usually have something planned out to make for family dinner in the evening.  Some favorites included pork chops and broccoli, pasta with vodka sauce, and barbecue chicken and rice.  Of course the summer was prime time for food; It was grill season.  Hamburgers, hot dogs, brats, skewers, among other things.

On the other hand, when my dad was at work, my mom would cook.  There were many nights of hamburger helper and pasta when my mom cooked.  One time she decided to be a little adventurous and make lasagna.  Unfortunately the meat she used was slightly spoiled and turned me off to lasagna even still to this day.  However, no matter who was cooking, the food was secondary.  I will always value the family dinners we had together because they really brought our family close.  It was always fun to talk about our day, discuss the new meal, or just tell jokes and laugh.

Back to the issue of gender and cooking though, the Cairns article talks about how cooking was and still is related to "food, care, and femininity."  Cooking has never been a feminine practice in my house.  For us it is a gender neutral practice, but it is evident that in our culture there is a strong bias towards labeling cooking as feminine.  And the Cairns article makes it clear that the issue is not trying to get more men to cook, but to make it more than just "helping out" or a hobby for men.  How could we try to remove these labels?  Also, how has your personal experiences in life affected your attitude towards gender role in preparing food?