Food & Power: Culinary Choices Reflect Gendered Labour In Indian Relationships

n India, where domestic roles are still heavily gendered, the simple question of what to eat can expose deeper inequalities in relationships. A woman adjusting her diet to accommodate her partner is rarely seen as a negotiation of power; it is normalised as care, patience, or love. Yet each compromise carries weight, shaping autonomy, intimacy, and self-expression. Food, in this sense, is both literal and symbolic, a lens through which gendered expectations become visible. The act of eating itself reveals unspoken hierarchies.

Women's Compromise: Everyday Emotional Labour

Rashi, 31, recalls her experience navigating the dating world. “I’ve had to turn down partners simply because I couldn’t imagine constantly compromising my meals or cooking differently every day. It felt like surrendering a small part of myself, over and over.”

Her words highlight a persistent tension: women are expected to absorb inconvenience and adjust silently, while men’s preferences remain unchallenged. The burden of culinary compromise is intimately tied to broader domestic labour. Cooking, planning, and accommodating family or partner preferences are socially coded as women’s responsibility.

Ananya, 27, explains, “I can try my partner’s favourite dishes, but I won’t erase my tastes just to avoid conflict. That’s not compromise; that’s self-negation.” The daily negotiations around food, though subtle, accumulate, influencing emotional well-being and relational power dynamics.

The burden of culinary compromise is intimately tied to broader domestic labour. Cooking, planning, and accommodating family or partner preferences are socially coded as women’s responsibility. The daily negotiations around food, though subtle, accumulate, influencing emotional well-being and relational power dynamics.

However, the challenge is not just women; men’s awareness, or lack thereof, plays a critical role. 

Arjun, 32, reflects, “I never realized how much she was adjusting her life around my meals until we lived together. It forced me to rethink my expectations.”

When men actively participate in sharing cooking, respecting dietary boundaries, and engaging with their partner’s tastes, mealtime becomes a site of collaboration rather than dominance. Shared responsibility transforms daily sustenance into an arena for mutual respect.

Food is also deeply connected to intimacy. Sharing meals and experimenting with each other’s preferences can reinforce emotional connection, while one-sided compromise can create subtle resentment, fatigue, and distance.

Priya, 29, observes, “Exploring my partner’s food world is enriching, but I refuse to lose my own. Respect begins with acknowledging each other’s tastes.” The kitchen, often dismissed as a domestic backdrop, emerges as a microcosm of relational equality: who cooks, who adapts, and who decides signals the distribution of power within the household.

Food as Power and Care

Generational changes further shape these dynamics. In older frameworks, women were expected to adjust silently, equating compromise with care. Contemporary women, more aware of boundaries and emotional labour, resist erasure.

Younger men, in turn, are recognising that partnership entails negotiation and shared responsibility. These evolving norms suggest that domestic spaces, long sites of gendered labour, can be transformed into zones of equality through conscious effort.

Practical considerations also underline the stakes. Preparing multiple meals or constantly adapting to a partner’s dietary habits can impose significant strain on time, nutrition, and mental health. Without intentional negotiation, these demands may lead to skipped meals, convenience eating, or stress.

Conversely, collaborative strategies shared meal preparation, adaptable recipes, or alternating responsibilities, can turn potential friction into relational enrichment. Couples who approach food with empathy often discover new tastes, shared rituals, and stronger intimacy.

Ultimately, food functions as both a metaphor and a mechanism for power and care. Women asserting dietary autonomy enact feminist agency; men’s active participation signals equality and mutual respect.

Rashi articulates this duality: “A relationship should expand your world, not shrink it. Exploring dishes together is love. Being forced to give up what you enjoy is not.”

Arjun adds, “Planning meals collaboratively doesn’t feel like work; it feels like a partnership.”

These insights reveal that negotiation transforms compromise from unilateral burden to shared practice, sustenance into ritualised intimacy, and domestic space into a locus of agency.

In India, where domestic expectations remain heavily gendered, asserting choice at the dinner table is a quiet yet radical act. Each meal, each compromise, and each negotiation is a claim to autonomy, a subtle dismantling of entrenched norms. Food, therefore, is never just sustenance; it is culture, identity, and a daily exercise in equality.

Views expressed by the author are their own.