Television As a Trattoria Constructing the Woman in the Kitchen on Italian Food Shows Introduction Gender is an enlightening lens through which food TV may be analysed

Gender is an enlightening lens through which food TV may be analysed (Voski Avakian and Haber, 2005: 6). Food television is in fact 'associated both with the elite world of the professional chef and with the realm of 'women’s work''(Lewis, 2008: 58). This article analyses three daily cooking shows broadcast by mainstream Italian television around noon in the period from October 2011 to June 2012. The article focuses on the roles of the woman in the kitchen in these shows, and on their relationships to the opposite categories of home and professional cooking. As argued by Goody (1982: 139) and Mennell (1996), home and professional cooking have developed as two separated and often opposing fields. However, in a process of social change in which diverse elements continually renegotiate reality (O'Connor, 2006: 78), they may constitute two opposite poles through which TV mediates a new role of the woman in the kitchen. Related to this, my research question asks: how do Italian daily cooking shows construct the role of the woman in the kitchen through the categories of home and professional cooking? By 'mainstream Italian television' this article means the three broadcasters RAI, Mediaset and La7. Italian mainstream television, originating in 1954 (Emanuelli, 2004: 35), reflects a traditional idea of TV designed for a wide audience, while the many new thematic channels, starting in the late 1990s, are made up of programmes for smaller and diversified publics (Brigida et al., 2004: 109, 143-144). This is 'audience segmentation' (Rayner et al., 2003: 104-105), undertaken by post-modern television all over the world. In Italy, mainstream channels get about 70 percent of the total rating, while thematic channels around 30 percent