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Elise Mognard, School of Food Studies and Gastronomy Taylor’s University, MALAYSIA

Anindita Dasgupta, School of Liberal Arts & Sciences Taylor’s University, MALAYSIA

Encuentra la versión en español:

Malaysia is a multi-cultural and multi-religious Southeast Asian society undergoing rapid urbanization. Mid-March 2020, the Movement Control Order was declared to curb the Covid-19 pandemic. Situated in this context, the research investigates the disruptions of routines in everyday life pertaining the gendered division of domestic unpaid food-related work and consciousness of food and body image. The study uses Netnography to gather qualitative evidence drawn from online official statements of relevant Malaysian government ministries like that of Women, Welfare and children, and Health; social and official media discussions of non-governmental and grassroots organizations and publicly available Facebook posts of working women from the three main ethnic groups in peninsular Malaysian metropoles. Preliminary analysis has unveiled the denunciation of patriarchal social relations on social media based on a set of recommendations to married women that the Women and Family Ministry briefly issued in an attempt to ensure harmony within ‘locked’ households. Subsequently, much of the language used in public messaging and crisis regulations has been cloaked in unexpectedly gendered language that reveals a private-public dichotomy where the ‘outside’ was conceptualized as the ‘action zone' and a ‘masculine’ space; leading to a shift of the usual division of domestic food labour while the mental load remained mainly on women as they were guiding remotely their husbands in their grocery incursions. The mental load is also resulting from their expected responsibility to transmit recipes and care for their family’s health. In the wider context of medicalisation of food, testimonies of ambivalent experiences between agency and gender role expectation have been published by women in their public posts, together with concerns related to the body image demonstrating the gendered internalisation of the body consciousness were displayed.