Conversation with Fifz

A Woman’s Place Is Not In The Kitchen:

Fiona Bopape 

In today’s society we are taught that as a young woman your place is in the kitchen to cook, to clean, to wash dishes and to bake. Women are valued by the size of pots they can cook and how many mouths they can feed.

Real talk!!!!!! Gone are those days when women had to slave away to put food on the table, don’t get this the wrong way I am not saying that women should not feed their families. What I mean is that a woman’s place is more than just a kitchen!!!!

Maya Angelo once said that we teach our girls to cook and to wash dishes but we do not do the same with our young boys, it begs the question what makes a woman? Doing laundry? Cleaning? Cooking? Ironing? And feeding the kids? Sure!! We can do all that and more but we need to give women recognition for all those work that they do without pay or a mere thank you.

It pains me when women get real with each other and we face the sad hard truth that till this day women are being subjected to the kitchen, till this very day women have no say on what is happening around her family and her own life. We live in a civilized society but sadly we are not civilized or have evolved with the times. 

Women are at fields nowadays sweating it off, we find women in the correctional services doing their thing, there are women in engineering too. That just proves that give a woman anything and she will conquer, there are women working while carrying kids on their back but she can still get the job done.

So, what is it that we are telling our young girls? That they must restrict themselves to just cooking? And yes there are very good cooks out there hence why in today’s world we have both male and female chefs.

Women are often expected to cook, to wash  dishes, to iron the entire day by the time the “head of the house” knocks off from work she must then be clean, sexy and ready for the nightly pleasures or duties. When does a woman have time for herself? When does she take a break? Let’s take a woman with an occupation after the stressful challenges of work she must come home to cook, bath the kids and then prep for the following day 

As women we are warriors and conquers, we are much more than the lipstick we put on and the underwear we take off. We are more than the dishes we wash, the clothes we iron and the insults we get for not being "women enough" because we are tired of being in the kitchen. 

The fact that women can turn any house into a home, food into a meal and any failure as a lesson, we need to give ourselves a break and applaud ourselves on what we do daily not because it is our job as women but because no one can do it better than a woman!!!

- Fiona Bopape