Gender and Food, and grilling

When I was growing up, I was not surrounded by the norm when it came to food and gender, although it was always brought to my attention.  My father does not grill.  He never has.  For no particular reason he just never has done the grilling, not because he doesn't know how (it's certainly not rocket science) or doesn't want to, he just never has.  My mother always did the grilling, as well as most of the other cooking.  Whenever we would have company over for dinner whether it's family or friends, without fail every single time there would undoubtedly be a joke about how my mother was grilling instead of my father.  They either joke around about my father's masculinity or question what my mom was doing over by the grill.  Being very comfortable in their own skin, neither of my parents ever took it to heart and always go along with the jokes as well.  But the fact that it always has to be a joke and always has to be brought up no matter who was eating over had always intrigued me.  My parents were clearly some crazy exception and I had no idea until outside sources told me.

Why does this have to be the case? Clearly there is nothing wrong with women preparing meat or men not. So why does meat get the gender assignment to it?  I remember seeing an article this past year that was titled "More women grilling this Memorial Day than ever before." Just a simple google search of women grilling brings up an array of sources teaching women to grill, articles about women "encountering a foreign cooking tool."  Is it just the fact that it's outside?

Perhaps males and females have differing instinctual drives to eat that influence choosing foods and feelings towards foods.  In the Bellows et al. article I thought it was interesting that more males reported that they "eat primarily to stay healthy" than females, but the most males and females that agreed with a statement was that it played a role in family traditions.  I also found the 72% of men to say that they like to cook to be high.