Modernization in Indonesia: Understand Gender Inequality Within Domestic Foodwork
Monday, July 29, 2024
16:15 – 18:00 (GMT+7)
Paper Abstract: In Indonesia, under Soeharto regime, the 1978 and 1983 development planning guidelines promote modern women as women-mother-wife and worker. Furthermore, the existence of women in workforce influences social organization of family life. Activities outside home make eating become individual. The timing of family eating meals becomes less synchronized and more informalized. At the same time, fathers today also engage in everyday domestic work, such as managing children’s routines and foodwork. However, the “intensive mothering” ideology, taking care of food provision still symbolizes for mother’s commitment to family. It simply puts foodwork as a central to do gender. Given above transformation, this study aims to determine whether modernization will increase gender inequality in the terms of food practices. Although modernization often leads to individualization and reflexivity but the interaction in food practices that creates liberal spaces make it possible to capture the consequences of modernization by exploring household structures, food choices, and pattern of preparation and consumption. Using secondary data from Indonesia Food Barometer (IFB), the data showed that within majority of respondents living with 3-5 family members (58.2%), cooking activities still dominated by women (70%). In addition, the decision of eating place and menu was still based on family references and mostly came from their children’s preferences. This study concluded that modernization still maintains the social construction of gender. At the same time, this study offers an open discussion to acknowledge intersectionality between gender perspective and modernization through the transformation of social structure and value systems in food.
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