# Woman chef in the kitchen? Get back in the kitchen! Why do we not accept women as chefs? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 24, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264 "2016-06-24T20:57:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TipTapTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/34f0e0/32.png) [@TipTapTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TipTapTwo)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/1 "2016-06-24T20:57:41Z")
I recently watched Season 1 episode 4 of Netflix’s show Chef’s Table, and on it, the owner/head chef Niki Nakayama of N/Naka Restaurant in Los Angeles recounted an experience of hers that left me confused. [QUOTE=Maria Fontoura] At a sushi bar where she worked before opening n/naka in 2011, a Japanese man once walked in, saw her behind the counter, did an about-face and left. "He thought, ‘This can’t be a real sushi restaurant—or a good sushi restaurant,’ " says Nakayama [/QUOTE] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/meet-niki-nakayama-one-of-the-worlds-only-female-kaiseki-chefs-1407509705](http://www.wsj.com/articles/meet-niki-nakayama-one-of-the-worlds-only-female-kaiseki-chefs-1407509705) I do not understand how people could ever judge a restaurant or its food as inferior just because a _woman_ is doing the cooking. Do those people think to themselves, “A woman doing a man’s job of cooking as a chef? Unforgivable! She should stay home in her own kitchen and make her own family delicious food! Everyone knows that at home no man knows how to cook nearly as well as his wife; however, in a restaurant the man will always make the superior food, and the women will never match his skill there!” I…don’t understand that customer’s way of thought. If anyone could enlighten me I would be grateful. I accept that working in a professional kitchen sucks away all of your free time and family life. The working conditions, long awkward hours, and grueling pace leave you unfit to care for a family, thus most women in this industry find jobs as caterers or pastry chefs. [QUOTE=Rachel Feit] This could explain why there are more women working as pastry chefs than in any other capacity in the kitchen. The flexible schedule of doing pastries, coupled with the relative autonomy pastry chefs have in the kitchen, allow women to maintain satisfying careers without sacrificing their personal lives. Catering offers the same sorts of advantages. [/QUOTE] > **[The Whole Woman](https://www.austinchronicle.com/food/2000-05-05/77058/)** > > The profound underexposure of women among Austin's food luminaries causes one to wonder whether a certain locker-room mentality still prevails in kitchens around the city. And I guess that I accept Mario Batali’s explanation of why we don’t see women at the highest rank running a restaurant as a head chef as often as we do men: [QUOTE=Stacy J. Williams]  the dominant cultural understandings about women do not mesh with what people believe it takes to be a professional chef. […] chef Mario Batali […explained] that women “don’t cook to compete, they cook to feed people.” However, competition lies at the heart of the restaurant business, with chefs competing for customers and media attention. One needs to be competitive to be a successful executive chef. Batali’s comment demonstrates the strength of the idea that women are more suited to cook to feed their families—not for a salary or prestige. [/QUOTE] [http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2014/05/gender-in-home-kitchens-and-restaurants.html](http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2014/05/gender-in-home-kitchens-and-restaurants.html) But how would these things mix and meld into our subconscious minds such that we would think that a woman would make worse food than a man, but only in the context of a restaurant? The man in Chef Nakayama’s example obviously went home and had his wife make him delicious food for dinner. Do people like him, or institutions like in France, [QUOTE=Rachel Fiet] One woman I talked to was actually denied entrance into France’s state-run culinary institute because they did not accept female applicants [/QUOTE] > **[The Whole Woman](https://www.austinchronicle.com/food/2000-05-05/77058/)** > > The profound underexposure of women among Austin's food luminaries causes one to wonder whether a certain locker-room mentality still prevails in kitchens around the city. forget that all of their vaunted culinary history and techniques were made by the women of the homes inventing them through their own home cooking? Do those people say that women should not be teachers as well, just because they should only be teaching their own children at home? Someone please explain this weird idea that having your time divided between the home where you do something (cooking/teaching), and the professional world, where you do the same thing but to a larger audience (chef/professor) somehow makes you worse than if a person (a man) only practiced the craft during business hours. We accept women being teachers, is it because of the relatively generous school hours that leave the teachers with (in theory) enough time left to take care of the family? Would we have had similar acceptance of women becoming chefs if only the restaurants scheduled more people/shifts such that the hours had been from the beginning, nice and short like a teacher’s time at school? Or only covering one breakfast/lunch/dinner rush? But, and again, do those people who think “it takes a lifetime to master the craft of proper sushi making,” also turn around out the door when they see a young newbie (male) being trained and serving food? Do they think that a woman is some Gamma (see Brave New World, basically the servant class that is genetically engineered to be inherently limited and unable to rise to Beta or Alpha ways of thinking or ability) that is inherently unable to master creating sushi (even at home?), unlike the male Alpha that can, with enough practice, eventually transcend the tastes of home cooking? ---
**Author:** ![seal\_cleaner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@seal\_cleaner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seal_cleaner)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/2 "2016-06-24T23:34:48Z")
Sorry, I stopped reading at “we.” ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/3 "2016-06-25T02:13:57Z")
Ordinary ingrained cultural sexism. It’s part of why we don’t see many women airline pilots, women bank presidents, women Mafia dons (donnas.) There’s no actual reason they can’t do they job every bit as well; we just live in a society that doesn’t believe in it. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/4 "2016-06-25T02:21:04Z")
If there were a prize for world’s worst chef, that would probably also go to a man. Don’t hear feminists crying about that one though. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/5 "2016-06-25T02:25:51Z")
YEAH! And very few of history’s murderous tyrants were women, either! In YOUR FACE, feminists! ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/6 "2016-06-25T02:28:26Z")
In my experience you need to be a bit of a controlling asshole to be head chef. Maybe with a bit of narcissism. Plenty of women can be controlling assholes, but they quickly get dismissed as “bitches.” Kitchen work involves a lot of emotion, some yelling, some forcefulness. Do you recall the thread we had recently about Hillary Clinton “yelling”? (ie speaking passionately on a topic) Men were popping in to say that they feared for their lives, they want to strike her, they wanted to immediately leave, etc. Just from hearing a woman raise their voice. Women can lead in a kitchen just as well as any man. But the men won’t follow her. In the restaurant where I worked it was run by a husband & wife team. All of the salespeople (for catering) and party managers were women, all the kitchen managers/head chefs were men. There were some guys who went between the back and the front of the house - they were gay guys, oddly enough. The company had no problem hiring women, they just didn’t have women in the kitchen (except me and another woman at the bottom of the ladder, and a woman pastry chef who, surprise, was considered “a bitch.”) So yeah, what \*\*Trinopus \*\*said. Sushi is a whole other ball of wax, tho. It means a little bit more than who can grill a mean steak. ---
**Author:** ![spamforbrains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@spamforbrains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spamforbrains)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/7 "2016-06-25T02:36:37Z")
> [@](#): > > Kitchen work involves a lot of emotion, some yelling, some forcefulness. why? the chef thing is obviously just blatant sexism, but anyone running a business who goes around yelling at employees is utterly incompetent, in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/8 "2016-06-25T02:52:10Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > why? > > the chef thing is obviously just blatant sexism, but anyone running a business who goes around yelling at employees is utterly incompetent, in my opinion. I said “some yelling” not “goes around yelling at employees.” And it’s usually at its peak during service. It gets stressful up in there, the head chef has to be like the drill sargent sometimes. But thanks, as usual, for your mis-guided opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/9 "2016-06-25T03:41:05Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > If there were a prize for world’s worst chef, that would probably also go to a man. Don’t hear feminists crying about that one though. You haven’t met my sister… ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/10 "2016-06-25T06:46:33Z")
I have a friend who trained as a sushi chef, and sexism in that particular role is well known. Women simply struggle to find apprenticeships. Googling a bit, it seems the main theories are that menstruation affects the food, women’s higher body temperature makes them unsuitable to handle delicate ingredients, women’s hands are too small and/or that women lack the sensory acuity necessary. You guys are looking for rational explanations, but it looks to me like with sushi it’s old fashioned purity superstitions more than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/11 "2016-06-25T06:50:16Z")
This reminds me of that guy on Reddit who posted a picture of the kitchen play set he put together for his son, and how he got some responses saying that he was feminizing his son. So yeah, sexism. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/12 "2016-06-25T09:35:25Z")
> [@](#): > > But how would these things mix and meld into our subconscious minds such that we would think that a woman would make worse food than a man, but only in the context of a restaurant? Sexism; specifically, the status aspect of it. A “chef” is of higher status than a mere “cook”, therefore the job of chef has historically been reserved for men while being a mere cook is regarded as “women’s work”. It only looks contradictory until you realize that it’s not really about the\* job,\* it’s about the _status._ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/13 "2016-06-25T11:56:55Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > This reminds me of that guy on Reddit who posted a picture of the kitchen play set he put together for his son, and how he got some responses saying that he was feminizing his son. Should’ve included a chef’s hat. [/ducks and runs] ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-chef-in-the-kitchen-get-back-in-the-kitchen-why-do-we-not-accept-women-as-chefs/758264/14 "2016-06-25T12:18:02Z")
I heard about[this lady](http://modernnotion.com/eugenie-brazier-terrifyingly-awesome-michelin-star-chef-2/) from Anthony Bourdain (on Netflix) > [@](#): > > Eugénie Brazier was born and raised on a farm in Ain, France near Lyon—the region she would help make famous. By five, Brazier was tending to the pigs, but when her mother died five years later, she was sent away to live on a larger farm to learn how to properly cook and clean. At 19, Brazier went to Lyon where she eventually worked in the restaurant of Mère Fillioux, who was one of the most well-respected provincial chefs in France and only employed women. LA Times reports, “At the time, French women chefs were rare. But in Lyon there was a tradition of women kitchen professionals. The ‘mères’ of Lyon were renowned.” > > Brazier never cooked in Fillioux’s kitchen, but observed enough to open her own eponymous restaurant in Lyon at age 26, which became very popular thanks probably in no small part to her friendship with Prime Minister Edouard Herriot. Another restaurant of the same name in Le Col de la Luère followed. Both showcased her pure, simple cooking and both won three stars from the Michelin guide—a first for any chef, man or woman. > > To those who knew her in the kitchen, she was La Mère Brazier—the mother of modern French cooking. In the Lyon episode of CNN’s _Parts Unknown_, Anthony Bourdain calls Brazier “the godmother, the original master—teacher, chef, force.” Her influence, Bourdain says, “runs right through every kitchen that’s come since.” This is underscored by Bourdain’s interview with Paul Bocuse—one of the world’s best chefs (he has three Michelin stars of his own), who is also a Lyon native and was a student of Brazier’s. When asked by Bourdain which chef he feared the most, Bocuse said (translation by the venerable chef Daniel Boulud), “La Mère Brazier. She was such a screamer, you would fall on your ass she was screaming so hard. So, yeah. Apparently it’s hard for women to become star chefs–unless they are exceptional. A few years ago some female chefs from Houston & Austin did a fundraiser for a dog rescue organization–at an event called [Bitches for Bitches](http://houston.culturemap.com/news/restaurants-bars/05-01-13-women-food-power-all-female-chefs-make-bitches-for-bitches-an-unforgettable-meal/#slide=0). Membership in the boys club depends on attitude, not just skill…