The idiom for pregnancy, “a bun in the oven,” which traces its origins back more than 2,000 years to Ancient Greece, is in fact “misogynistic,” according to Kathleen Crowther, an historian of reproductive medicine at the University of Oklahoma.
Crowther insists the idiom reduces the role of the mother to a mere incubator after the majority of the work has been done by the man. “I don’t think most people who use that metaphor are being misogynistic.”
“But I think it actually does come from a deeply misogynistic tradition of thinking about women’s bodies as passive,” she argues.
Instead, people should readopt the 17th century English metaphor “a guest in the house” because that requires housewives to undertake their duties of hospitality and care. “It suggests pregnancy is an active process – the pregnant woman is actively doing or creating something in a way that the ‘bun in the oven’ metaphor does not,” Crowther adds.
This follows efforts made by the British Medical Council last month to remove the word “woman” so as to avoid offending anyone with “female specific-language.”
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