The shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot: the daily feeding of professional female cooks

Abstract

The aim of this article was to understand how female restaurant kitchen workers in Brazil and Spain reconcile their paid careers with domestic chores, especially food production at home. The biographical stories were obtained through individual interviews using the technique of constructing professional trajectories. The data was analyzed in the light of reflections on the reconciliation of personal life, with a focus on food production at home, and career, revealing the following themes: tiredness and lack of time; support network or outsourcing of domestic work; strategies for eating; eating at work; and poor diet. In this dynamic, eating as a family is transposed to the workplace and ways of eating in the private sphere are adapted to possible circumstances, often neglecting health aspects. Mastering cooking skills has recently been treated in the literature as one of the ways to overcome social, physical and economic obstacles to guaranteeing food and nutritional security, but integrated policies on work and social benefits are fundamental to a broader approach to the issue.