Stirring the Pot: Women in a Male Dominated Kitchen
by Elizabeth Roscoe
Abstract
Found at the structural, organizational, and cultural levels is the question of why women are somehow tied to the chore of cooking within the home while simultaneously rejected from the professional kitchen? Why do so few women occupy the highest positions in the culinary field although they are expected to fulfill the role of the cook in the household without status or pay? The occupation of a chef is particularly pertinent to the study of gender and work as it highlights issues of gender inequality in work while also deconstructing the idea that “women’s work” is somehow natural to a female.
Since the emergence of (post) industrial society, there seems to have occurred a distinction between “men’s work” and “women’s work”. “Women’s work” has often been confined to labor produced within the home while “men’s work” takes place outside of the home in the public sphere. Such activities comprising “women’s work” include: cleaning, laundry, childcare and, in particular, cooking. It is beneficial to discuss and explore the reasoning behind why there seems to be a disparity in which gender should (as culturally understood) undertake the task of cooking in the private and public spheres. While women are traditionally expected to cook in the home, it is difficult for women to break into the heavily male dominated culinary field in the public sphere. Although it has conventionally been expected for women within the home to cook, when an individual patrons a fine restaurant, it is not often a woman behind the stove. The question of what prevents or blockades women from entering and maintaining positions as chefs remains at the structural, organizational, and cultural levels. This specific occupation is particularly pertinent to the study of gender and work because it emphasizes the problem of gender inequality within the work industry while simultaneously breaking down the argument that somehow “women’s work” is natural to a female. As is visible within the culinary world, even when a traditionally understood “women’s activity” is professionalized, it is difficult for women to reach top positions that their male colleagues tend to hold more often.
Often from young ages, girls are presented with toys such as the Easy Bake Oven or the Kitchen Playmobil in order to socialize them into believing that cooking is an appropriate and necessary activity for girls. However, as these girls grow up, they are faced with cultural and structural images that tell them their place to cook only exists in the home, not a professional kitchen. Post World War II North America saw a burgeoning conservatism and the emergence of what we would now call the “traditional” middle-class family. This model placed the man outside of the home as the paid breadwinner and the women as the unpaid housewife. On top of being the primary caregiver for the children, cleaning, and taking care of the house, women were also expected to prepare, cook, and serve all meals. Although this image of a family has faded since the 1950s, many of the responsibilities (including cooking) typically designated for women have remained primarily in the hands of women. By these standards, if women are still considered capable and “intrinsically” apt to complete the daunting task of cooking for their families in the home, why is it so difficult for women to leave the home and reach a status holding position as a professional chef?
Even with the recent influx of newcomers to the culinary industry in recent years, men are still more likely than women to rise to the highest positions offered in a kitchen (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 5). A variety of obstacles lie in wait for women with ambitions to rise to the status of a chef. Factors firmly established within the organizational level make this path a difficult one for females. According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, organizations are gender-neutral and gender is brought into the organization from the outside; nonetheless, gender is reproduced in these structures. In contradiction, Joan Acker critiques Moss Kanter in claiming that organizations are built from the beginning with a gendered substructure. Acker’s position is far more salient in explaining the difference of experiences between men and women in the professional kitchen. Furthermore, “the occupation of chef exemplifies Acker’s ‘ideal worker’, as an employee without family responsibilities, and working long hours provided bragging rights and proof they could ‘make it’ as chefs” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 8). If the burdens of household duties and childbearing/rearing remain on the shoulders of women, the “ideal worker” is then a man who is free from such domestic obligations. The abilities to work grueling hours, sacrifice personal time, endure physical pain sustained in the kitchen, and compete with the “rest of the boys” are often the qualities most respected in the kitchen.
However, these qualities and attributes of competitiveness, toughness, and endurance are traditionally conflated with masculinity. Therefore, a woman by the sheer virtue of being female must often prove herself even more and work even harder than her male colleagues. As Hochschild has said of females in male-dominated fields, “these women must ward off the ‘evil eye’ of male coworkers by working long hours to prove they are deserving of their position and their promotion was based upon merit and not ‘luck’” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 4). The existence of professional kitchens as a “boys’ club” leaves any woman who enters it as a token. Humans are intrinsically hemophilic and like to interact with others like themselves (Roth 2004). As the minority group and outsider, she may be tested and criticized more harshly, teased or sexually harassed, or just not taken seriously. As Anthony Bourdain reveals in his book, Kitchen Confidential, the kitchen is a hotbed for highly sexualized comments. If a kitchen is primarily composed of heterosexual men who engage in this banter, the entrance of a woman may lead them to feel like they must censor themselves and therefore resent their female colleague or, worse yet, place this new coworker as the focus of sexual jokes or conversation. The issue of sexual harassment within professional kitchens is a growing problem within this highly gendered occupation.
The modern professional kitchen adopts its rigid structure from a military approach. A firm hierarchy is in place where one’s skills and status are understood by their role within the kitchen. The importance of this hierarchy is perhaps no more obvious than in the difference between a cook and a chef. While a chef is granted higher public status and the freedom to be creative and imaginative with their food, a cook may only be responsible for following the chef’s recipes and produce food. A chef is also more often than not trained in some sort of culinary institution whereas a cook could be anyone with no formal education in the culinary arts. However, that is not to say that one is granted the position as a chef by simply attending a culinary institution. There is strong feeling within the culinary industry of paying one’s dues and working your way up the hierarchal ladder. Unfortunately, this ladder was built to be a bit more difficult for women to climb than men.
Joan Acker in her article, “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations”, describes “gendered processes” as practices and procedures on the job that make a distinction between male or female and masculine or feminine .The reproduction of gender stereotypes creates an environment wherein men benefit and become more likely to dominate certain occupational fields. The five interacting gendered processes or practices that she lays out can easily be transposed onto the chef profession; “Acker argues that organizations are gendered through ideology, interactions, identities of workers, policies, and organizational logic” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 5). The professional kitchen employs a highly masculinized framework wherein the “ideal” chef has little to no familial responsibilities, frat-like interactions among workers are commonplace, and access to leave opportunities for childrearing are few and far between. The disregarded consideration of familial responsibilities in the structure and organization of a kitchen proves to be one of, if not the most, troublesome features of life as a professional chef.
The article, “’The Price You Pay’: How Female Professional Chefs Negotiate Work and Family” by Harris and Giuffre, seeks to uncover the various strategies and courses of action women within the culinary field have taken in balancing their private and work lives by interviewing thirty-three women who have culinary experience. Throughout the course of the study, it was discovered that the women tend to adopt at least one of three strategies in order to negotiate home and work life: “(1) delaying or forgoing childbearing to succeed as a chef; (2) leaving kitchen work for another job in the culinary field; and (3) adapting either work or family to make the two roles more compatible” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 9).
The women who delayed or did not have any children often stated that a “family would have held me back” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 10). Unfortunately, given the current organizational structure, this notion would more than likely be true. Due to financial constraints on small businesses (e.g., private restaurants), employers often cannot offer maternity leave or childcare opportunities. Therefore, the decision to have a child for a female in the culinary industry would mean leaving her job and possibly sacrificing everything that she had worked for up until that point. Corporate positions, such as being a chef in a large restaurant chain or a hotel, may provide better security and leave opportunities for women but such a position is not as highly regarded as it forces one to work off a standardized menu and inhibits any sort of creativity (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 10). The necessary devotion and concentration on one’s career led some women to not give up the opportunity to have children altogether, but rather to just delay the process until they reached a point in their careers where they felt secure and stable enough to take the required time off. But unlike men, women must not only plan these life events on how far they’ve come in their careers but also on a biological time frame. Working to the point of security and confidence in one’s career can last throughout a woman’s fertile years. One woman stated that although “working long, nontraditional hours helped make her successful as a chef and business owner… her success proved to be intimidating to potential romantic partners and the time she devoted to her career made it difficult to meet men” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 11). These women have seemed to sacrifice something that their male counterparts did not. Even though male chefs are subject to these same long, nontraditional hours and paying one’s own dues, the option of starting a family is physically a more viable option for them. This proves to be advantageous for men in that they are not faced with the decision to have children or not in lieu of building a career.
The second strategy employed by the women studied in Harris and Giuffre’s interviews took to sidestepping their career. Instead of hitting the “glass ceiling”, these women hit the “maternal wall” (Belkin 2003: 406). Rather than continuing up the ladder to chefdom or remaining in the position of a chef, these women took to leaving the professional kitchen and switching to occupations that make it easier for them to negotiate family and work. Such careers include catering or becoming an instructor at a culinary institute, both jobs that are heavily female to begin with. These positions allow for more regular hours and leave opportunities for childcare. Many of the women interviewed shared that they tried to maintain their positions in the kitchen while simultaneously trying to care for children but eventually there came a breaking point. Many of the mothers experienced feelings of guilt as the intense time demands as a professional chef kept them from spending time with their children. And even though men are susceptible to the same loss of time with their children, “research indicates that cultural constructions of ‘good mothers’ imply that women should be primary caregivers and be responsible for making difficult decisions about prioritizing work or children” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 9). These women emphasize that it was their “choice” to leave their positions in the kitchen to enter another profession in the culinary field in order to negotiate family needs and career paths. However, “even if women see family as ‘pulling’ them ‘back home’ (or, pulling them into less demanding occupations in their fields, as was the case for some of our respondents), it is actually the structure of their workplaces that ‘pushes’ women out” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 11). The requirements to become and maintain a job as a chef are carefully framed around cultural expectations of gender roles. The “ideal worker” being a male who has someone (i.e. a wife) at home to take care of the children and women who will sacrifice their careers for internalized ideologies that it is their responsibility to place family above all else. Interestingly enough, none of the women even alluded to suggesting that their husbands rearrange their work schedules or re-prioritize to put family before his career (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 12). Here the notion that culturally a man’s work-family arrangement takes priority over a woman’s is taken for granted. The societal and cultural judgment of mothers who spend most of their time at work is quite critical and pins them as a “bad mother” while a father who spends most of his time working is considered a hard worker who is providing for his family.
For the women who opted to stay in the professional kitchen following the births of their children, a variety of accommodations and networks had to be laid out to balance work and family life. The support of a supervisor proved to be critical for mothers in the professional kitchen. However, mostly men hold these positions and it may be difficult to garner sympathy and understanding for family needs from a male superior. Furthermore, it is difficult for women to hold these positions as many of them decide to “opt out” before getting to that point in their careers (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 13). Moreover, “while female chefs benefited from husbands who helped with the ‘second shifts’ of childcare and other tasks, several of the women frequently drew from extended kin and friendship networks to help fill in the childcare gaps” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 14). The rhetoric of “help” is quite indicative here. It simultaneously suggests that the home and its required work are reserved for the woman, but if she is absent and the man undertakes some of her work, he should be praised as he is going above and beyond what is expected of him. Further exemplifying this notion of childcare and housework as “women’s work” is the fact that “even when it is other family members or friends who help with day-to-day needs, female chefs tend to describe them as ‘helping’ me in their role as mother rather than providing general assistance to the ‘family’” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 15). In this way, like many other professions, female professional chefs struggle to upkeep their careers while dealing with the domestic “second shift” by making accommodations and modifications to their work-family arrangement through the employment (paid or not) of others in their lives.
In recent years the phenomenon of the “celebrity chef” has exploded. Media representations of women and men in the culinary world help to both reveal and reproduce the apparent gender inequality. As Drickman states, “just turn on the Food Network: women are everywhere. The problem isn’t lack of airtime. It’s the quality of that time and the way in which the women are portrayed: as cooks, not chefs; as pretty faces who do easy meals for families or casual parties”. The portrayal of female and male cooks or chefs respectively is both highly feminized and masculinized as well as sexualized. Women on the Food Network Channel often host shows donning relatively tight fitting clothing, make up, and in a home kitchen while teaching those at home (presumably women and mothers) quick easy meals to prepare for their families. This broadcasted image of women in the kitchen culturally reaffirms their place in the home kitchen while at the same time running counter to what may be found in professional kitchens. In order to be taken seriously professionally, female chefs often adopt a more androgynous aesthetic; “they are generally unfeminine, short-haired, and makeup free, often quite muscular, even manly, in appearance. It’s as though the only way to gain legitimacy as a food force is by hiding all traces of femininity” (Drickman 2010: 29). In contrast to this feminized illustration, representations of men in the culinary industry paint them as fearless mavericks, as bad asses or as inventive and innovative pioneers in their field. By reproducing the image of women as the “beautiful homemaker” and men as inspired culinary nonconformists, it helps to reify the understanding of women as cooks and men as chefs. Cooks are hierarchally subordinate to chefs and therefore this posits women as subordinate to men overall and a woman in the top position as just an exception.
Surprisingly, many women do not want the structure or organization to change. The female chefs who have already established themselves have worked extra hard and tirelessly to get where they are and feel “that any special policies or programs that were created specifically for women would take away from the equality they had earned” (Harris & Giuffre 2010:16). Established female chefs do not want newcomers fresh out of the culinary academy to think that simply going to culinary school means that you are granted the status of a chef. They are perpetuating the same “start at the bottom, pay your dues” mentality that they had to endure.
Today, the difficult situation for female chefs is largely understood and recognized by women in the field; however, what may go overlooked are the underlying cultural and societal expectations forced upon and even reinforced by women. The pessimistic outlook of Drickman asserts that “because they remain isolated and pigeonholed by the media, by culinary institutions, and sometimes even by their male peers, women don’t have the influence, numbers, or respect to change the reality of restaurant kitchens” (Drickman 2010:31). Structural, organizational, and cultural barriers prevent women from reaching the highest echelons of their profession while concurrently advantaging men to take such positions. Women alone will not be able to properly address and fix this problem. Rather, a much larger discussion of gender expectations and “roles” must take place at the societal level. The double standard in place regarding men and women’s work-family arrangements must be tackled. Macro approaches to this ideological problem will result in changing institutional and organizational policies and greater inclusion and consideration of women in the workforce that will benefit not just female chefs, but all women in male-dominated fields or positions.
REFERENCES
Acker, Joan. 1990. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations.” Gender and Society 4(2): 139-58.
Bartholomew, Patricia S. & Garey, Jenene G. (1996). “An Analysis of Determinants of Career Success for Elite Female Executive Chefs”. Pp. 125 – 135 in Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research Vol. 20:2. Accessed February 12, 2011. (http://jht.sagepub.com/content/20/2/125.full.pdf+html).
Belkin, Lisa. 2003. “The Opt-Out Revolution.” New York Times Magazine October 26.
Bourdain, Anthony.2000. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. New York: Harper Perennial.
Drickman, Charlotte. (2010). “Why Are There No Great Women Chefs?”. Pp. 24-31 in Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, Vol. 10, No. 1. Accessed February 12, 2011. (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/gfc.2010.10.1.24)
Harris, Deborah A. & Giuffre, P. (2010). “The Price You Pay”: How Female Professional Chefs Negotiate Work and Family. Gender Issues, published online 12 May 2010.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. 1977. “Numbers: Minorities and Majorities” and “Contributions to Theory: Structural Determinants of Behavior in Organizations.” Pp. 206-64 in Men and Women of the Corporation by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. New York: Basic Books.*
Roth, Louise Marie. 2004. “The Social Psychology of Tokenism: Status and Homophily Processes on Wall Street.” Sociological Perspectives 47(2): 189-214.
Elizabeth Roscoe
Elizabeth Roscoe is currently a U3 McGill University student completing her Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology with a double minor in Social Studies of Medicine and Sexual Diversity Studies. Her interest in gender equality, particularly in the labour market, led to the investigation of this paper topic. In case you were wondering, her interest in Top Chef has not become a casualty of such academic pursuits and has not dissipated in the least.
by Elizabeth Roscoe
Abstract
Found at the structural, organizational, and cultural levels is the question of why women are somehow tied to the chore of cooking within the home while simultaneously rejected from the professional kitchen? Why do so few women occupy the highest positions in the culinary field although they are expected to fulfill the role of the cook in the household without status or pay? The occupation of a chef is particularly pertinent to the study of gender and work as it highlights issues of gender inequality in work while also deconstructing the idea that “women’s work” is somehow natural to a female.
Since the emergence of (post) industrial society, there seems to have occurred a distinction between “men’s work” and “women’s work”. “Women’s work” has often been confined to labor produced within the home while “men’s work” takes place outside of the home in the public sphere. Such activities comprising “women’s work” include: cleaning, laundry, childcare and, in particular, cooking. It is beneficial to discuss and explore the reasoning behind why there seems to be a disparity in which gender should (as culturally understood) undertake the task of cooking in the private and public spheres. While women are traditionally expected to cook in the home, it is difficult for women to break into the heavily male dominated culinary field in the public sphere. Although it has conventionally been expected for women within the home to cook, when an individual patrons a fine restaurant, it is not often a woman behind the stove. The question of what prevents or blockades women from entering and maintaining positions as chefs remains at the structural, organizational, and cultural levels. This specific occupation is particularly pertinent to the study of gender and work because it emphasizes the problem of gender inequality within the work industry while simultaneously breaking down the argument that somehow “women’s work” is natural to a female. As is visible within the culinary world, even when a traditionally understood “women’s activity” is professionalized, it is difficult for women to reach top positions that their male colleagues tend to hold more often.
Often from young ages, girls are presented with toys such as the Easy Bake Oven or the Kitchen Playmobil in order to socialize them into believing that cooking is an appropriate and necessary activity for girls. However, as these girls grow up, they are faced with cultural and structural images that tell them their place to cook only exists in the home, not a professional kitchen. Post World War II North America saw a burgeoning conservatism and the emergence of what we would now call the “traditional” middle-class family. This model placed the man outside of the home as the paid breadwinner and the women as the unpaid housewife. On top of being the primary caregiver for the children, cleaning, and taking care of the house, women were also expected to prepare, cook, and serve all meals. Although this image of a family has faded since the 1950s, many of the responsibilities (including cooking) typically designated for women have remained primarily in the hands of women. By these standards, if women are still considered capable and “intrinsically” apt to complete the daunting task of cooking for their families in the home, why is it so difficult for women to leave the home and reach a status holding position as a professional chef?
Even with the recent influx of newcomers to the culinary industry in recent years, men are still more likely than women to rise to the highest positions offered in a kitchen (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 5). A variety of obstacles lie in wait for women with ambitions to rise to the status of a chef. Factors firmly established within the organizational level make this path a difficult one for females. According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, organizations are gender-neutral and gender is brought into the organization from the outside; nonetheless, gender is reproduced in these structures. In contradiction, Joan Acker critiques Moss Kanter in claiming that organizations are built from the beginning with a gendered substructure. Acker’s position is far more salient in explaining the difference of experiences between men and women in the professional kitchen. Furthermore, “the occupation of chef exemplifies Acker’s ‘ideal worker’, as an employee without family responsibilities, and working long hours provided bragging rights and proof they could ‘make it’ as chefs” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 8). If the burdens of household duties and childbearing/rearing remain on the shoulders of women, the “ideal worker” is then a man who is free from such domestic obligations. The abilities to work grueling hours, sacrifice personal time, endure physical pain sustained in the kitchen, and compete with the “rest of the boys” are often the qualities most respected in the kitchen.
However, these qualities and attributes of competitiveness, toughness, and endurance are traditionally conflated with masculinity. Therefore, a woman by the sheer virtue of being female must often prove herself even more and work even harder than her male colleagues. As Hochschild has said of females in male-dominated fields, “these women must ward off the ‘evil eye’ of male coworkers by working long hours to prove they are deserving of their position and their promotion was based upon merit and not ‘luck’” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 4). The existence of professional kitchens as a “boys’ club” leaves any woman who enters it as a token. Humans are intrinsically hemophilic and like to interact with others like themselves (Roth 2004). As the minority group and outsider, she may be tested and criticized more harshly, teased or sexually harassed, or just not taken seriously. As Anthony Bourdain reveals in his book, Kitchen Confidential, the kitchen is a hotbed for highly sexualized comments. If a kitchen is primarily composed of heterosexual men who engage in this banter, the entrance of a woman may lead them to feel like they must censor themselves and therefore resent their female colleague or, worse yet, place this new coworker as the focus of sexual jokes or conversation. The issue of sexual harassment within professional kitchens is a growing problem within this highly gendered occupation.
The modern professional kitchen adopts its rigid structure from a military approach. A firm hierarchy is in place where one’s skills and status are understood by their role within the kitchen. The importance of this hierarchy is perhaps no more obvious than in the difference between a cook and a chef. While a chef is granted higher public status and the freedom to be creative and imaginative with their food, a cook may only be responsible for following the chef’s recipes and produce food. A chef is also more often than not trained in some sort of culinary institution whereas a cook could be anyone with no formal education in the culinary arts. However, that is not to say that one is granted the position as a chef by simply attending a culinary institution. There is strong feeling within the culinary industry of paying one’s dues and working your way up the hierarchal ladder. Unfortunately, this ladder was built to be a bit more difficult for women to climb than men.
Joan Acker in her article, “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations”, describes “gendered processes” as practices and procedures on the job that make a distinction between male or female and masculine or feminine .The reproduction of gender stereotypes creates an environment wherein men benefit and become more likely to dominate certain occupational fields. The five interacting gendered processes or practices that she lays out can easily be transposed onto the chef profession; “Acker argues that organizations are gendered through ideology, interactions, identities of workers, policies, and organizational logic” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 5). The professional kitchen employs a highly masculinized framework wherein the “ideal” chef has little to no familial responsibilities, frat-like interactions among workers are commonplace, and access to leave opportunities for childrearing are few and far between. The disregarded consideration of familial responsibilities in the structure and organization of a kitchen proves to be one of, if not the most, troublesome features of life as a professional chef.
The article, “’The Price You Pay’: How Female Professional Chefs Negotiate Work and Family” by Harris and Giuffre, seeks to uncover the various strategies and courses of action women within the culinary field have taken in balancing their private and work lives by interviewing thirty-three women who have culinary experience. Throughout the course of the study, it was discovered that the women tend to adopt at least one of three strategies in order to negotiate home and work life: “(1) delaying or forgoing childbearing to succeed as a chef; (2) leaving kitchen work for another job in the culinary field; and (3) adapting either work or family to make the two roles more compatible” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 9).
The women who delayed or did not have any children often stated that a “family would have held me back” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 10). Unfortunately, given the current organizational structure, this notion would more than likely be true. Due to financial constraints on small businesses (e.g., private restaurants), employers often cannot offer maternity leave or childcare opportunities. Therefore, the decision to have a child for a female in the culinary industry would mean leaving her job and possibly sacrificing everything that she had worked for up until that point. Corporate positions, such as being a chef in a large restaurant chain or a hotel, may provide better security and leave opportunities for women but such a position is not as highly regarded as it forces one to work off a standardized menu and inhibits any sort of creativity (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 10). The necessary devotion and concentration on one’s career led some women to not give up the opportunity to have children altogether, but rather to just delay the process until they reached a point in their careers where they felt secure and stable enough to take the required time off. But unlike men, women must not only plan these life events on how far they’ve come in their careers but also on a biological time frame. Working to the point of security and confidence in one’s career can last throughout a woman’s fertile years. One woman stated that although “working long, nontraditional hours helped make her successful as a chef and business owner… her success proved to be intimidating to potential romantic partners and the time she devoted to her career made it difficult to meet men” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 11). These women have seemed to sacrifice something that their male counterparts did not. Even though male chefs are subject to these same long, nontraditional hours and paying one’s own dues, the option of starting a family is physically a more viable option for them. This proves to be advantageous for men in that they are not faced with the decision to have children or not in lieu of building a career.
The second strategy employed by the women studied in Harris and Giuffre’s interviews took to sidestepping their career. Instead of hitting the “glass ceiling”, these women hit the “maternal wall” (Belkin 2003: 406). Rather than continuing up the ladder to chefdom or remaining in the position of a chef, these women took to leaving the professional kitchen and switching to occupations that make it easier for them to negotiate family and work. Such careers include catering or becoming an instructor at a culinary institute, both jobs that are heavily female to begin with. These positions allow for more regular hours and leave opportunities for childcare. Many of the women interviewed shared that they tried to maintain their positions in the kitchen while simultaneously trying to care for children but eventually there came a breaking point. Many of the mothers experienced feelings of guilt as the intense time demands as a professional chef kept them from spending time with their children. And even though men are susceptible to the same loss of time with their children, “research indicates that cultural constructions of ‘good mothers’ imply that women should be primary caregivers and be responsible for making difficult decisions about prioritizing work or children” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 9). These women emphasize that it was their “choice” to leave their positions in the kitchen to enter another profession in the culinary field in order to negotiate family needs and career paths. However, “even if women see family as ‘pulling’ them ‘back home’ (or, pulling them into less demanding occupations in their fields, as was the case for some of our respondents), it is actually the structure of their workplaces that ‘pushes’ women out” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 11). The requirements to become and maintain a job as a chef are carefully framed around cultural expectations of gender roles. The “ideal worker” being a male who has someone (i.e. a wife) at home to take care of the children and women who will sacrifice their careers for internalized ideologies that it is their responsibility to place family above all else. Interestingly enough, none of the women even alluded to suggesting that their husbands rearrange their work schedules or re-prioritize to put family before his career (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 12). Here the notion that culturally a man’s work-family arrangement takes priority over a woman’s is taken for granted. The societal and cultural judgment of mothers who spend most of their time at work is quite critical and pins them as a “bad mother” while a father who spends most of his time working is considered a hard worker who is providing for his family.
For the women who opted to stay in the professional kitchen following the births of their children, a variety of accommodations and networks had to be laid out to balance work and family life. The support of a supervisor proved to be critical for mothers in the professional kitchen. However, mostly men hold these positions and it may be difficult to garner sympathy and understanding for family needs from a male superior. Furthermore, it is difficult for women to hold these positions as many of them decide to “opt out” before getting to that point in their careers (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 13). Moreover, “while female chefs benefited from husbands who helped with the ‘second shifts’ of childcare and other tasks, several of the women frequently drew from extended kin and friendship networks to help fill in the childcare gaps” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 14). The rhetoric of “help” is quite indicative here. It simultaneously suggests that the home and its required work are reserved for the woman, but if she is absent and the man undertakes some of her work, he should be praised as he is going above and beyond what is expected of him. Further exemplifying this notion of childcare and housework as “women’s work” is the fact that “even when it is other family members or friends who help with day-to-day needs, female chefs tend to describe them as ‘helping’ me in their role as mother rather than providing general assistance to the ‘family’” (Harris & Giuffre 2010: 15). In this way, like many other professions, female professional chefs struggle to upkeep their careers while dealing with the domestic “second shift” by making accommodations and modifications to their work-family arrangement through the employment (paid or not) of others in their lives.
In recent years the phenomenon of the “celebrity chef” has exploded. Media representations of women and men in the culinary world help to both reveal and reproduce the apparent gender inequality. As Drickman states, “just turn on the Food Network: women are everywhere. The problem isn’t lack of airtime. It’s the quality of that time and the way in which the women are portrayed: as cooks, not chefs; as pretty faces who do easy meals for families or casual parties”. The portrayal of female and male cooks or chefs respectively is both highly feminized and masculinized as well as sexualized. Women on the Food Network Channel often host shows donning relatively tight fitting clothing, make up, and in a home kitchen while teaching those at home (presumably women and mothers) quick easy meals to prepare for their families. This broadcasted image of women in the kitchen culturally reaffirms their place in the home kitchen while at the same time running counter to what may be found in professional kitchens. In order to be taken seriously professionally, female chefs often adopt a more androgynous aesthetic; “they are generally unfeminine, short-haired, and makeup free, often quite muscular, even manly, in appearance. It’s as though the only way to gain legitimacy as a food force is by hiding all traces of femininity” (Drickman 2010: 29). In contrast to this feminized illustration, representations of men in the culinary industry paint them as fearless mavericks, as bad asses or as inventive and innovative pioneers in their field. By reproducing the image of women as the “beautiful homemaker” and men as inspired culinary nonconformists, it helps to reify the understanding of women as cooks and men as chefs. Cooks are hierarchally subordinate to chefs and therefore this posits women as subordinate to men overall and a woman in the top position as just an exception.
Surprisingly, many women do not want the structure or organization to change. The female chefs who have already established themselves have worked extra hard and tirelessly to get where they are and feel “that any special policies or programs that were created specifically for women would take away from the equality they had earned” (Harris & Giuffre 2010:16). Established female chefs do not want newcomers fresh out of the culinary academy to think that simply going to culinary school means that you are granted the status of a chef. They are perpetuating the same “start at the bottom, pay your dues” mentality that they had to endure.
Today, the difficult situation for female chefs is largely understood and recognized by women in the field; however, what may go overlooked are the underlying cultural and societal expectations forced upon and even reinforced by women. The pessimistic outlook of Drickman asserts that “because they remain isolated and pigeonholed by the media, by culinary institutions, and sometimes even by their male peers, women don’t have the influence, numbers, or respect to change the reality of restaurant kitchens” (Drickman 2010:31). Structural, organizational, and cultural barriers prevent women from reaching the highest echelons of their profession while concurrently advantaging men to take such positions. Women alone will not be able to properly address and fix this problem. Rather, a much larger discussion of gender expectations and “roles” must take place at the societal level. The double standard in place regarding men and women’s work-family arrangements must be tackled. Macro approaches to this ideological problem will result in changing institutional and organizational policies and greater inclusion and consideration of women in the workforce that will benefit not just female chefs, but all women in male-dominated fields or positions.
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Elizabeth Roscoe
Elizabeth Roscoe is currently a U3 McGill University student completing her Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology with a double minor in Social Studies of Medicine and Sexual Diversity Studies. Her interest in gender equality, particularly in the labour market, led to the investigation of this paper topic. In case you were wondering, her interest in Top Chef has not become a casualty of such academic pursuits and has not dissipated in the least.