No Longer Invincible: Women’s Role in Promoting Ubud as Culinary Destination in Bali

The development of cultural tourism in Ubud has contributed to the rise of its image as a culinary destination. Surprisingly, the ascent of this new image was mainly reinforced by women’s role in practicing local culinary entrepreneurship. Even it is acknowledged that culture is a dynamic entity, Balinese women get very rare exposure in the culinary world as it is commonly known mastered by men. On the other hand, culinary tourism has now taken a major part in many tourist destinations. As an emerging trend, culinary tourism faces the fears the world is surrendering to: McDonaldization and cultural homogenization. With this emerging trend, Ubud’s cooking culture and tastes own a major potential in promoting the destination. However, as a part of culture local culinary in Ubud is rarely being studied or visible to the academic literatures. Becoming fertile terrain for researches that explore the discipline of cultural tourism, very little research also has been carried out into gender dimension in culinary tourism in Ubud. This paper is a first attempt to unpack women’s role in promoting Ubud’s image as an emerging culinary destination. Using qualitative method, the paper explores women who have not only succeeded in lifting local culinary as traveller’s preferences but also in opening up job opportunities in rural areas. The data presented in this article were collected through observation and in-depth interviews of four leading Ubud women who have run successful local culinary outlets or restaurants offering local dishes. The four women surveyed are the owner of Kedewatan Chicken Rice (Nasi Ayam Kedewatan) Ibu Mangku, the owner of the infamous suckling pig in Ubud Ibu Oka, the owner of Bebek Bengil Agung Raka Sueni, and the owner of Paon Bali cooking class Ibu Puspawati. Combining literature reviews and data obtained through observation and in-depth interviews, this paper aims to provide an overview of the potential of culinary tourism to contribute to the gender equality. The result of this structured evaluation shows that one of the main key elements that played an important role in Ubud’s success, as a culinary destination, is women empowerment. By understanding what and how known restaurants and local talents like Ibu Oka, Ibu Mangku, Bebek Bengil, and Paon Bali are achieving their success, food can certainly become a large contribution to sustaining cultural heritage as well as a stepping point to Balinese women empowerment.

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