Freeing women from domestic servitude through kitchen cooperatives : two utopians at the turn of the 20th century
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This article presents the thoughts of two feminists who developed utopias for the mutualisation of cooking, Melusina Peirce (1836-1923) who imagined “cooperative housekeeping” at the end of the 1860s in Massachusetts, and the German socialist Lily Braun (1865-1916) who defended the “one-kitchen house” at the beginning of the 20th century in Berlin. The socialization of culinary work was to replace the solitary domestic labor that was then the responsibility of women. By saving time and energy, the days at home were to be shortened and women were to be able to pursue other activities, especially public ones. However, these kitchens were seen as places where mainly women worked: the aim was not so much to change the division of labour between men and women as to recognise women’s work, possibly by paying for it. Peirce and Braun, through their reading of food work, contributed to thinking about the boundaries between private and public space. Their utopias were only partially realised, and posterity has largely focused on forms of delegation and outsourcing of food work, while the dream of a shared collective kitchen has been thwarted by the development of rationalised and technologised individual kitchens designed to make housewives more efficient.
Réseaux sociaux