Gender Roles: The Twentieth Century

The new century saw gender roles associated with food continuing in the directions already established. Male-run chain stores, begun in the nineteenth century by A&P, expanded during the 1920s, facing competition from Grand Union, Piggly Wiggly, and Krogers. Large food corporations merged and remerged, forming international networks of male trade and production.

Waves of immigration provided a labor force of women with their own domestic experience, and many of them hired out as cooks to middle-class households. When it was financially possible, women stayed home and cooked, providing both nutrition and culture. Generally immigrant women arrived versed in the gender divisions found in the United States. Many were able to support their families upon arrival, as their food skills were easily marketable and they quickly found work as cooks or workers in canning factories, for example. In many cases the men were slower to find their way into the male job market and found themselves cooking at home, if only temporarily. Consequent reversals of acceptable gender roles were, in the main, unsettling to the family and often disrupted family status hierarchies. Acculturation was accomplished with a certain urgency. The women of immigrant families were sometimes targeted by social workers, who tried to expedite the process of acculturation and assimilation by teaching them American cookery.