Eating Last Has Serious Consequences on Women's Mental Health

The culture of women eating after feeding the entire household is still prevalent in our countries even though studies have shown that such sexist practices have physical and mental connotations on women's health.

Mental health has always been an issue most of us tip-toe around. Even though, as a 20-year-old, I can attest that most of our generation, the generation above us, and the generation coming up are/have/will suffer from some complications concerning mental health without looking up any statistical evidence. Everyone has their story; everyone has conflicts and difficulties in their lives that they struggle with.

However, mental health is not a concept we usually indulge with while talking about feminism as we do on this platform. Still, I can tell you that mental health as a concept is deeply feminist, and that is what I am here to talk about today. 

The feminist movement has been around for centuries fighting for women's liberation from various oppression. However, one phenomenon noticed in the Indian subcontinent pertains to how food is distributed in various households. For example, girl babies are breastfed for shorter periods than boy babies, girl children are given less and worse food than boy children, and women, despite doing almost all of the cooking, are often expected to eat last. When women eat their meals after men, they often eat leftover food of lower quality than what they would consume if they ate together.

This tradition has kept its place in our culture for a long time, and traditionalists use various explanations to defend a sexist practice. For example, they say that women show appropriate respect to their husbands and in-laws by eating last. Moreover, by eating last, the women can assure that everyone is served with hot-hot rotis. 

This practice has proven to affect women's physical and mental health. For example, in a study based on a comparison between households where women eat last and in homes where women do not face this kind of discrimination, women who experience this particular type of gender discrimination are more likely to be underweight.

Such robust association between eating last and women's physical health, in turn, impacts their mental health.

Women's mental health may suffer due to waiting until the men in the household have finished eating, which deteriorates their physical health and creates room for lack of autonomy, creating a vicious cycle. 

Also Read: Does Sexism In Kitchen Make Women Resent Cooking?

There have been other studies that have associated poor mental health with gender-based discrimination against women. For example, a study found that mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression are more prevalent in women facing gender-based disadvantages such as low autonomy in decision-making, lack of social integration, and physical and sexual violence within marriage. 

Women's mental health and the connection to them eating last : Presenting important argument to question this silence violence

Oppression of this kind goes unnoticed daily. Still, it is a true testament to how deeply rooted patriarchy is in our culture. To all those who defend sexist practices like such, why doesn't the house woman deserve warm fluffy rotis? Why do you deserve hot rotis? We have reached a stage in our feminist movement where autonomy, physical violence, and harassment are being called out and discussed in the public arena, but we must let the movement complicate and associate deeply rooted patriarchal violence based in households into the conversation. Cut the tree of patriarchy at its root.

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