I don't think the cooking analogy is bad or sexist. Cooking is about the only daily activity that comes to mind where people follow a set of written instructions. As such it simply seems to be THE best analogy for explaining programming, no matter if told to a man or a woman. (I am male and I do cook on a regular basis). The only time I used it so far was when I explained programming to a man (not that many people actually want to know what programming is).
If you know a better analogy, I would be interested to hear it.
Another one that I would use to prove that everybody can program: giving directions on the street. It's basically programming an agent to reach a destination, even with loops ("while the park is on the right..."). Cooking still is better, because of the written instructions.
Indeed I think it is the best analogy, and I have an entire spiel involving how to bake billions of cupcakes with multiple ovens in multiple houses that covers most of the important concepts in high performance computing.
If you know a better analogy, I would be interested to hear it.
Another one that I would use to prove that everybody can program: giving directions on the street. It's basically programming an agent to reach a destination, even with loops ("while the park is on the right..."). Cooking still is better, because of the written instructions.