Men belong in the kitchen

By Alexandra Shemagina Semeikina

Every International Women’s Day brings statistics celebrating women entering professions historically dominated by men. Law is one example. In 2025, women made up around 52% of practising barristers in the UK, marking a dramatic shift in a field that was once almost entirely male. The kitchen tells a very different story. In the UK, only around 17% of head chefs are women. The paradox is striking: cooking has long been culturally associated with women, yet the moment it becomes prestigious, professional, and profitable, it becomes overwhelmingly male.

So is professional cooking really an example of men entering a female-dominated field? Or have men simply transformed the meaning of cooking itself?

The kitchen has historically been framed as a woman’s space. Anthropologists often trace this back to early divisions of labour, where women remained closer to the home to care for children and prepare food while men hunted or carried out other forms of external work. Whether or not that narrative perfectly reflects early human societies, the idea itself became culturally entrenched.

Even today, women remain more likely to carry the bulk of everyday cooking responsibilities within households. But the moment cooking shifts into a visible, performative setting, the dynamic changes.

Take the barbecue. At many social gatherings, men “do the barbecue” while women prepare everything else: salads, drinks, the table, desserts, and eventually the cleaning up. Yet the barbecue is treated very differently from the rest of the meal. It becomes an event. The grill becomes a stage. The cook stands beside it while friends gather around offering commentary on the meat, passing beers, and congratulating him on the results. Meanwhile, the invisible labour surrounding the meal continues quietly elsewhere. Cooking, in this context, becomes performance. Professional kitchens amplify this transformation. Restaurant cooking is rarely framed as domestic labour. Instead, it is presented as technique, mastery, and creativity. Chefs are artists, innovators, even celebrities.

Cooking is no longer just cooking. It is attractive. It is charming. It is content

Television cooking shows and social media have reinforced this image, turning the act of preparing food into entertainment. Online food creators frequently present cooking in a stylised, almost theatrical way: microphones capturing the sound of sizzling meat, slow-motion shots of knives slicing through steak, dramatic plating sequences. Even the simplest “high-protein dinner” becomes a spectacle. Especially if an objectively attractive man flips eggs while staring into the camera as if he is about to propose. Cooking is no longer just cooking. It is attractive. It is charming. It is content.

Perhaps we have been looking for performative men in the wrong places all along. In 2025, the internet has become fascinated with the idea of the “performative man”: men who visibly signal sensitivity or cultural awareness through curated aesthetics, reading feminist literature in public, or cultivating a carefully constructed soft intellectual persona. Reading Sylvia Plath while listening to Clairo through wired headphones certainly conveys a different from grill and beer vibe. But does it not serve the same purpose?

Both are performances of identity. The barbecue ritual reveals something similar. What appears to be the most traditionally masculine activity imaginable — grilling meat over fire — is also a carefully staged demonstration of competence and control. It is masculinity performed through cooking. Seen this way, the gender imbalance in professional kitchens begins to make more sense. The ability to transform everyday labour into specialised craft has always carried prestige. Professional kitchens reward exactly that transformation. Cooking stops being routine domestic work and becomes something closer to art: a skill to be mastered, displayed, and monetised.

And once cooking becomes performance, authority tends to follow the performer.

Perhaps the next time a shirtless man appears on your feed spanking a cold chicken, it is worth pausing for a second

None of this means that men cooking is somehow a problem. Quite the opposite. The world would probably be a better place if more people, regardless of gender, felt comfortable in the kitchen. Cooking is one of the simplest ways people take care of each other. There is certainly nothing wrong with your boyfriend deciding to make handmade dumplings for you on Valentine’s Day, or proudly announcing that he has perfected a new pasta recipe. If anything, that is something worth celebrating.

But perhaps the next time a shirtless man appears on your feed spanking a cold chicken, it is worth pausing for a second. Not to criticise it. Just to recognise the theatre of it all.

Cooking has always involved a little performance. The sizzling pan, the careful plating, the confident presentation of the final dish; these moments are part of what makes food enjoyable to share. When cooking becomes visible, creative and even slightly dramatic, it turns into something social rather than routine. And that is not a bad thing.

So by all means enjoy the meal. Appreciate the effort. Just allow yourself a small giggle at the spectacle of it all. After all, the kitchen might still be a stage, but at least more people are finally stepping onto it.

Image: Canva