Real women eat steak - & not just sexist ladies cuts!

The first time I realised it was OK for a woman to order a steak dinner at a restaurant was in an episode of Sex and the City, that old feminist encyclopedia.

The year was 2001. I was 17. And the first thing that came to my mind was "Wow. For a woman who is totes into Manolos and Chanel, ordering a steak seems like a real contradiction. It's so ... unwomanly of her."

Advertising had taught me that she should have ordered a salad or something daintier. Who was she, after all? Fred Flintstone?

And while I am on the subject of the Flintstones, ever noticed how it's always Fred who is chowing away at his rack of dinosaur ribs? What does poor, genteel Wilma eat? Nothing. And that's probably why her dress is always Jik degrees of pristine white.

This is how the media and the meat industry have gendered steak for us. Women don't eat it, and when they do it's rare - pun not intended - and shocking.

The sexism of steak starts in children's cartoons and ends in the restaurant. Meat is a man thing and not much has changed. Well, stick a fork in me, I am done!

LADIES CUT

Trivia time: do you know what the difference is between 200g and 400g? That's right. The size. 400 take away 200 is 200, so obviously 400g is 200g larger than 200g and so size is the only disparity. But add the name of any cut of steak after that measurement and, lord above, 200g becomes all the difference in the world. In the meat industry, 200g is the difference between a man and a woman. It is what restaurants like to call a "ladies cut".

Fighting for our rights to steak isn't exactly the same as fighting for equal pay, for example, but my god, we aren't even safe in restaurants. It has become impossible to escape the pressures of gender roles even there.

When's the last time you saw a woman dining solo in a nice restaurant, ordering a fat steak and settling the bill with her unequal pay? Just the other day I was out with my partner at an old Sea Point steakhouse and men were out in their millions. Ordering their meat in peace, alone.

DON'T BE CHICKEN

The gender bias in the meat industry is so strong, in fact, that science was able to prove red meat is synonymous with masculinity.

When Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab conducted a study on the top five most "masculine" foods, steak clocked in at No1. The most feminine food was chocolate, followed by peaches. What?

This wasn't always the case. Anthropological studies prove that Neanderthal women were robust mammals, economically independent from males, bringing down boar, bison, wild horses, mammoths and deer in close-encounter hunting.

But here's the twist: they didn't carry the meat home with them. They grubbed out in the open to avoid their kill being filched by bullying males.

So it's modern man who is responsible for the modern-day special on a restaurant menu. Men get their steak and women get some leaves and maybe a spritzer for the same price. "Mmm hmmm, shrubbery," said no meat-eating woman ever.

It's time to throw back to our ancestors. Don't be chicken about ordering your steak, even if you have to run to the bush to enjoy it alone ... and guilt-free.

And while we're there, we can start digging the graves for the other gender roles as well.