If you're the type of person who likes to be wined and dined by a man, then you might want to start packing your bags.
According to a new survey, there is only one country in the entire world where men cook more meals than women.
The Gallup and Cookpad home-cooking survey shows women in 2022 cooked more meals than men in essentially every country or area surveyed -- with one interesting exception: In Italy, men cooked 0.4 more meals per week than women did.
"In 2022... the trend of more men than women cooking not only accelerated, but Italian men exceeded women in average number of meals cooked," the survey noted.
Globally, cooking rates among women in 2022 held steady at an average of 8.7 meals per week. Men, on the other hand, cooked 0.7 fewer meals per week than they had the year before, dropping their average to 4 meals, according to the survey. As a result, the cooking gender gap widened to 4.7 meals per week — a statistically significant gap. It's the first time that men's participation in the kitchen has dropped since the annual survey began in 2018.
Overall, women cooked more than twice as often in 2022 as men did. While the cooking gender gap stands at 4.7 globally, some countries are nearly double the global rate -- including Ethiopia, where women cooked 8.6 more meals than men on average per week. The next-largest gaps were in Tajikistan at 8.2 more meals, and Egypt, Nepal, Yemen and Algeria, all with women cooking around 8.1 or 8.0 more meals on average than men per week.
Even in countries or areas where the cooking gender gap is small, it still tilts toward women cooking more than men. Those with smaller gaps tend to be located in Europe, with the notable exception of Jamaica. In 2021, Jamaica was the only country where men cooked at higher levels than women — though the most recent survey finds that the tables have turned, with women cooking on average 1.0 more meals per week than men.