Why are there no female cooks at my restaurant?

[Rigamarole]

I work in a restaurant, and I couldn’t help but notice something about the cooks - they all have penises. (well, I didn’t actually notice the penises, I’m just assuming they have them based on their outward appearances)

Now my examination sample is by no means what you might call “large”. I’ve never worked at another restaurant, but something tells me this phenomenon isn’t unique to mine. Is there a reason for this prejudice? I don’t usually notice race, but while we’re talking prejudice, I might as well also note that 90% of them are Hispanic. (it’s an American grill-type restaurant - our only remotely Hispanic menu item is the empanada appetizer-plate).

But the reason I’m particularly interested in the male/cooks thing is because I always had the impression the list of skills for the “traditional” female gender role involved cooking in there somewhere. I understand traditional gender roles are all but moot today, but it would be naive to think their remnants aren’t still ingrained into things.

Oh, and before hundreds of you shoot back with anecdotes about how you know of a female cook who works in a restaurant, I’d rather hear some sort of statistic about the general trend in the profession… or if you at least know of a restaurant with a 50/50 ratio (or greater percentage female) that would be anecdote-worthy.

[Wallenstein]

There are 110 Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK, yet only three of their head chefs are women.

Two of those - Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray of the River Cafe - are at the same restaurant. The other one is Angela Hartnett of the Connaught, part of the Gordon Ramsay empire.

Due to the fluid nature of the catering industry, it’s hard to get exact figures for the male-female split in the kitchen.

(More details in full article)

It's a man's world

[madmonk28]

I just wanted to chime in and say that I worked as a cook in lots of restaraunts from the time I was 16 until I was 30 and I saw very few female cooks. The female cooks I did know tended to work the day/morning shifts and not the night shifts. I’m not sure why that is, but that’s what I observed.

[Chez_Guevara]

There is more anecdotal evidence here.

SInce my day job is as a cook ( I work nights, I get to go in in about an hour and a half to prep for dinner) and I’m a woman, here’s a little bit of insight.

Yes, there are more male chefs than female chefs, however, in a similar fashion, there are a lot more women pastry chefs than there are women doing standard evening fare. I think the last ratio I heard of was 1 woman:5 men.

In part this is because cooking professionally has always been a male dominated field. Why? Because women are expected to cook, but they are expected to cook AT HOME. Women when they do go out to cook professionally, end up getting harrased a lot in their kitchens, in part because of this myth. (I’ve gotten this a lot)

There is a LOT of machismo in most kitchens and sometimes that becomes a very hard and discouraging environment to work in. Good kitchens are run a lotl like military operations. Everything is preceise, everything must bne on time, everything must work like a well oiled machine. and if something comes in to distract, or throw that off (i.e. pretty women working near you) everything falls into disarray and you get yelled at. So, women end up being mistrusted in kitchens, which is sad. again, hard to work with sometimes.

The good news, however, is that more women are getting into the field and that more men are starting their careers working with women so that they don’t have this attitude. Again, I can only speak from my experience and beliefs, but maybe it clears up stuff a little bit.

also, if you’re still curious, check out Anthony Bourdain’s book ‘Kitchen Confidential’. It talks about this a bit, also ‘If You Can’t Stand the Heat’ which has a few articles by women chefs/restaurant owners and talks about it as well. flip through them the next time you’re out manga shopping.

[ZipperJJ]

I used to work in a 4-star catering outfit and we indeed only had one female chef out of, oh, say 10 head chefs. I’m a female and I worked in the kitchen but I was just the salad and dessert bitch, not any kind of chef.

And as per the article above…that female chef was moving towards pastry chef by the time I left the job (our other pasty chef happened to be a gay male).

Also as per the article above, the kitchen IS a testosterone-filled place. The fellas liked the rush and the pace and the craziness. The head chefs liked the machismo of making all the decisions. My cousins (not chefs) loved working the grills.

Seemed like the female head chef got a little too frazzled at times, more than the male head chefs. She was kind of uppity to begin with, while all the other head chefs were really laid back and cool.

FWIW, most of the sales department and project managers were either women or gay men. So the women did the selling and worked with the client, and the men bossed eachother around in the kitchen.

Er ok so that was just some anecdotal evidence there. HOWEVER…it backs up the OP…

[athelas]

Obviously, because you’re discriminating! Stop it!

[Rachael_Rage]

The vast majority of my observations in NYC are that line cooks in restaurants are either Hispanic or Asian males. This is in diners, delis, pizza places and casual restaurants where the cooks are clearly visible, not 4-star schmancy places.

Cooking is difficult, hot, dirty labor. The hours are long and the wages are low. The women I know who have worked in restaurants were all waitstaff, hostesses and bartenders. My guess is that they’d pretty much do anything other than subject themselves to kitchen work.

It also seems to me that a lot of restaurant labor (either cooks or waitstaff) is done “under-the-table” for cash, which appeals to undocumented workers. This keeps wages very low. I know people who have waited tables for tips only. That’s right, no hourly wage. So many people want to live here, that they will essentially work as slave labor just to get by. It’s really sad.

[Argent_Towers]

Agreed. The business of cooking is basically a blue-collar one, and shares many things in common with manual industrial labor. Cooking a dinner party at your home is one thing, cooking in a hot and cramped kitchen in a restaurant is another.