I have a similar experience to you in terms of who does the cooking (my brother is in catered halls, first year of uni, and was wild with excitement when he smuggled in a steam cooker so he could finally do his own cooking!). But I think it's less about who does it and more about who is expected to do it. Knitting may be devalued, but I think in a lot of households women being expected to cook is part and package of unreasonable expectations being made on them and outright aggressiveness/abuse.