|
Men are spending more and more time in the kitchen encouraged by celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, according to a report from Oxford University. The effect of the celebrity role models, who have given cookery a more macho image, has combined with a more general drive towards sexual equality, to mean men now spend more than twice the amount of time preparing meals than they did in 1961. According to research by Prof Jonatahn Gershuny, who runs the Centre for Time Research at Oxford, men now spend more than half an hour a day cooking, up from just 12 minutes a day in 1961. Prof Gershuny said: "The man in the kitchen is part of a much wider social trend. There has been 40 years of gender equality, but there is another 40 years probably to come." Women, who a generation ago spent a fraction under two hours a day cooking, now spend just one hour and seven minutes – a dramatic fall, but they still spend far more time at the hob than men. Some commentators have dubbed the emergence of men in aprons as "Gastrosexuals", who have been inspired to pick up a spatula by the success of Ramsay, Oliver as well as other male celebrity chefs such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Marco Pierre White and Keith Floyd. "I was married in 1974. When my father came to visit me a few weeks later I was wearing an apron when I opened the door. He laughed," said Prof Gershuny | 
