Although cooking is a feminine-coded labor, why are there fewer women chefs compared to men in the professional high-end cooking industry?
I am not the first to consider this paradoxical question, as there have been many scholars from different fields who have researched it. To understand how cooking has become men’s professional work, we have to go back to the seventeenth century in France, where Haute Cuisine, a term that translates as “high cooking,” originated. We also now know Haute Cuisine as “fine dining.” Dishes under this technique were first cooked by military men with the title “military title officer de cuisine” for the nobles (Harris & Giuffre, 2015). However, since cooking has long been women’s unpaid work in home kitchens, the French male chefs needed a way to disassociate themselves from the feminine qualities and adhere strictly to the “hegemonic masculinity.”
Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) define hegemonic masculinity as an ideology that believes in the dominance of men over women and other subordinated men through manhood traits, such as guarded emotions, competition, heterosexuality, and violence. Because the French gastronomic field was built around hegemonic masculinity, women were excluded from Haute Cuisine in the early days, received less recognition in the Michelin Guide, were paid significantly less, and experienced a lot of violent acts.
Then came the rise of celebrity chefs, cookbooks, and cooking shows when French cuisine arrived in the United States. In the late 1950s, James Beard and Julia Child were shaping American cuisine and making French cuisine more accessible to all American cooks. With Child’s influence, American women were seen to enter the culinary world more and started their own restaurants, such as Alice Waters, who opened Chez Panisse with her female colleagues (Harris & Giuffre, 2015).
Celebrity chef stories and food programming continued to be publicized in the 21st century, when Anthony Bourdain published his Kitchen Confidential (2000) memoir, and the first American MasterChef episode was aired (2010), featuring Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich, and Graham Elliot. Despite the increase in women’s participation in culinary school and in high-profile cooking events, women remain barred from climbing the leadership ladder and gaining executive positions. In addition, women still encounter sexist and misogynistic behaviors and remarks from their male counterparts, reminding them that they are the inferiors in the male kitchens. In 2017, women chefs joined the ongoing #MeToo movement to call out influential male chefs, like John Besh, Mario Batali, Johnny Iuzzini, Charlie Hallowell, and Mike Isabella, for sexual harassment, which is one of the main reasons why women can’t accelerate in this field (Harris & Giuffre, 2020).
My interest in this topic stems from my mother’s frequent warnings not to work in a kitchen. With all honesty, I would have gone to a culinary school because cooking is a passion of mine. Yet, I came to learn that the reality of fine dining work is sad and draining for women when I took Women’s and Gender Studies classes in college. Like in any workplace, women have to work much harder than men to be successful.
Specifically interested in the microaggressions and sexual violence against women chefs in the United States, I plan to use scholarly articles, books, the James Beard awards database, and MasterChef episodes for analysis. Moreover, I will interview my mom because I am curious to learn more about her experience when she was a chef. I hope to make this project for people from all walks of life who are interested in food and cooking to recognize the signs of inequality and abuse in this field that may be subtle and get erased as the meal is digested. Most importantly, for us to think about the stories left untold in the popular food media and hold dominant chefs accountable for their unethical actions, which we often excuse because their flavor overpowers.
References
Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender & Society, 19(6), 829–859. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205278639
Haddaji, M., Albors-Garrigós, J., & García-Segovia, P. (2017). Women Chefs’ Access Barriers to Michelin Stars: A Case-Study Based Approach. Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, 15(4), 320–338. https://doi.org/10.1080/15428052.2017.1289133
Harris, D. A., & Giuffre, P. (2020). #Me Too In the Kitchen. Contexts, 19(2), 22–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504220920190
Harris, D. A., & Giuffre, P. (2015). Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen. Rutgers University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15sk7w4