Ever see “Hell’s Kitchen”? A friend of mine owns a restaurant and his head chef is a woman. I was talking to her a couple of weeks ago, and I mentioned this show, and how abrasive the chef is. She said he was pretty nice, in comparison to some places she has worked. She dropped a couple of names which I won’t repeat but would be known to DC diners, saying how difficult they could be to work for, but you do it anyway because they’re the best.
I also mentioned Bourdain’s book and she thought it was a fair and accurate depiction.
The kind of cooking done at home is way different than that done in restaurants. Right there you have a clue about why most chefs are men–while men are doing the cooking in a professional kitchen, women are–still–often expected to look after the family. Hence, women are less inclined to work hours that are so family-unfriendly. Those that do choose to work in such an environment can, of course, do very well. I can think of a bunch of great female chefs right here in NY. But they have chosen to make a trade off that many wouldn’t
Another reason might be that restaurant kitchen often still do have an aggressive, macho environment. I think this partially has to do with the fact that there needs to be a lot of dangerous work done in a very short time, so a sort of type-A leader personality is perceived as necessary for the barking of orders.
Women are far more common in the pastry end of the restaurant business. This is often at least as difficult as the work in the main kitchen. It just involves better hours and less involvement in the high-heat insanity of that environment.
Lastly, I think that the number of male TV food personalities is not a great measure of the proportion of men and women working in kitchens. It’s more a measure of what the network thinks looks good on TV.
I agree with this assessment. I only once worked in a professional kitchen (as a kitchen porter), and I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life. It’s a tight ship, and if you think Chef Ramsey is abrasive…he’s positively a softie compared with the guys I worked around.
I’m a gen-ed teacher at a culinary school, and after observing and interacting with the ethos of chefdom, I can fully agree with the general macho tenor described by Bourdain and the others above. I never knew there were so many creative ways to deprecate another person’s alleged sexual proclivities until I started listening to the banter in the faculty offices here.
It also comes up as an issue in the course I teach. The general consensus is that a woman can certainly succeed in the business … so long as she doesn’t act feminine. Or as one chef said about a student that was a bit thin-skinned: “anyone that thinks the words ‘sexual harrassment’ apply in a kitchen has no future in [the restaurant industry].”
This would pretty much be a description of a hospital pathology lab as well. Although lab work has a much higher ick factor I’d be willing to bet. The lab I’m in now is predominantly staffed by female medical technologists. My class in college was at least two-thirds female. Hmmm.
Looks like we’re up against a formidable status quo here…one that quite a few females as well as all the males are comfortable with. No one has to cook for a living, and the work ethic might somehow be affected in a different kitchen environment, so status quo it is.
BTW, I’ve eaten at Nora in DC, and if the above applies, I wouldn’t want to work there, either. Because it’s beyond excellent.
There is no way a pathology lab is as hot, anyway, as a restaurant kitchen. That’s one reason why it’s so difficult to work in them (for men or women). It’s about 90-100 degrees, or more, 12 hours a day behind a line. (A line is what the area in front of the stove and broilers is - that place where the chefs stand as they cook).
I’ll grant that pathology requires precision work. But there’s no comparison as to the physical working conditions.
Also, pathology labs are not places in which you are placed in a high pressure situation in which literally seconds count every single day. I’m sure there might be emergencies that crop up that require people to pull an all-nighter but trying to do the same thing on a daily basis extracts far more of a toll physically and psychologically.
Also, despite the recent glamourisation of chefs on TV, line cooking is an abysmally paid, abusive, demanding and unrewarding job. By far the majority of people who do it do it not because they love food, but because it’s the only job they can get. Immigrants, ex-cons, people living outside the law etc.
I know how hot kitchens are, my brother is a sous chef. He loses buckets of sweat each shift. I was primarily addressing the high-pressure portion of the comment. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
I’m not quite sure where to start with this though…
My lab provides services for the entire hospital as well as the emergency room, which is packed every single night. You never know what will roll in at any given time. I invite anyone who thinks seconds don’t count in the lab to spend a night in the blood bank trying to provide components for a g.i. bleeder vomiting buckets of blood in the ER while an emergency aortic aneurysm surgery is going sour in the OR and the surgeons are screaming for packed cells. This is a VA hospital and we’ve got a high proportion of alcoholics therefore a lot of g.i. bleeders. Many are repeat customers that I’ve worked on for years. And the extra joy that is knowing you are totally on your own working weekends covering the entire lab for the whole shift (cost-cutting measure don’t you know). Whatever train-wreck the ambulances bring in, whoever goes bad on the floor or in the i.c.u., it’s all up to me, no back-up baby. It’s not just some restaurant customer who doesn’t come back or gets a free meal. It’s someone who might die because I’m not good enough. Every single day.
Sorry, my mistake. My vision of a pathology lab was some place that the CDC runs which is meant to keep tabs on new outbreaks and such. Evidently, that’s not very close to reality.