In Week 3, we watched a screening of Cake, a Pakistani movie that explores the dynamic between family members brought together to care for their dying parents.

One of the first things I noticed in Cake was that it sought to invert traditional gender roles.

Pakistan, much like its mortal enemy neighbour India, has a very strong traditionalist presence – to many people, the rules are the rules because the rules have always been the rules. This manifests in many different ways in a family, but the primary one is the preservation of traditional gender roles, in which men go to work and are the breadwinners, whilst the women cook and clean.

But Cake goes out of its way to flip these notions on their head. There are several moments throughout the film that show this, like the aforementioned scene in which a woman changes a car tire…