'Where Are the Women?': On the Scarcity of Female Chefs
Gourmet Magazine's Laura Shapiro picked a strange time to bemoan the scarcity of female chefs. In yesterday's article "Where Are the Women," she writes, "I’m thinking in particular of a question that always bothers me when I read stories about chefs winning awards, chefs opening spectacular new restaurants, chefs starring in yet another new TV series—congratulations, but why are all of you male? Where are the women?"
After the jump, why she's wrong—Top Chef spoiler alert!
Stephanie Izard
Um, did she not notice that Stephanie Izard just won Top Chef, with runner-up Lisa Fernandes close behind? And Shapiro complains that most TV chefs are male, but the Food Network features plenty of women, from Rachael Ray to Nigella Lawson to (sigh) Paula Deen. What's more, Laura Bush named Cristeta Comerford to the position of White House executive chef in 2005, making her the first woman to ever hold the position. Shapiro's question "Why are all of you male?" ignores the praiseworthy achievements of the many women who are publicly acknowledged for their skills as chefs.
New York City: Tough on Female Restaurateurs
Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar
But Shapiro eventually makes it clear that she is actually referring to the lack of women in the New York restaurant scene—as opposed to the Bay Area, which is full of happy female Alice Waters wannabes, or the television, a subject which Shapiro never quite returns to. There, she's right on the mark. New York City's gender disparity is hard to argue with; just look at New York Magazine's article this past October in which some of the city's few high-powered restauranteuses dished about sexism in the industry.
Both the Gourmet and the New York Magazine articles offer some interesting insights as to why New York might be a tougher place than most for female chefs. The main conclusion seems to be that New York kitchen hours are longer and more grueling, and thus less friendly towards women who want to have families. But the chefs interviewed in New York Magazine also suggest that it is harder for women to raise money. As Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar puts it, "It's the boys' club." "Because they play golf together or they play poker together," adds Patricia Yeo, formerly of Monkey Bar and Spa. And as Shapiro points out, "If you’re a woman who loves cooking, New York offers lots of more manageable ways to make a living with food."
Women Outside the Professional Kitchen
Ruth Reichl
New York provides women with a plethora of appealing alternatives to chef-dom (and the Serious Eats office, which often contains more women than men, is perhaps a case in point). Blogosphere aside, of course, there are plenty of women in New York with extremely successful food careers that don't require them to cook all night—Gael Greene, Ruth Reichl, Amanda Hesser. But these articles imply that women who become food writers or television stars are somehow settling for less. The New York Magazine article says of Food Network women, "They’re TV personalities, not chefs. They don’t turn out hundreds of meals a night on a hot, high-stress line at one of the country’s most esteemed and critically scrutinized restaurants." So what? Maybe these women are making a choice not to lead that kind of lifestyle, and who are we to disparage their decision?
But maybe it's not actually a choice. Shapiro compares David Chang's celebrated Momofuku to Gabrielle Hamilton's more obscure Prune—each, Shapiro points out, is "tiny" and "uncomfortable" with an "idiosyncratic menu," but it's Chang who's receiving all the press. If it's not because of the food, could it be simply because of a media tendency to focus on men? Or because men tend to cook with more gimmicks, thus inviting more press attention?
Television: The Female Chef's Best Friend?
As complicated as the contributing factors may be, it seems clear that New York is not a place where female chefs are likely to thrive. So perhaps it is up to television, disparaged by New York Magazine and basically ignored by Shapiro, to usher in a new generation of female chefs with a different kind of ambition. It may or may not be too late for New York, but a burgeoning crop of Stephanie Izard-emulators sounds pretty good to me.
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9 Comments:
Rachael Ray, Nigella Lawson, and Paula Deen aren't chefs.
BangieB at 3:57PM on 06/13/08
When I watch Food Network, I often seem to pick up different signals from shows depending on whether the host is a man or a woman. The woman, who often had their hand in professional cooking, oftem seem to have the sense of cooking for their hubbies as a day-to-day thing. The men seem to be cooking with a sense that it's the weekend, a good time for a big meal for our friends and family, before heading back to our restaurant(s) on Monday. How many FN women have their own restaurants as opposed to FN men? Maybe going to TV was the only way women could advance their careers?
OneWallKitchen at 4:06PM on 06/13/08
Also, it did strike me, as the last episode neared, that the remaining women started to get really, really excited about being the first female Top Chef. I think that says a lot, too--they've noticed that the winners have always been men.
OneWallKitchen at 4:08PM on 06/13/08
I try my best to account for the shortage of female chefs with this portion of the entry under "Women" in The Devil's Food Dictionary:
Women tend to be underrepresented in the ranks of top-class restaurant chefs, probably because their innate nurturing tendencies render them incapable of some of the most routine chef’s tasks. Few are up to the challenge, for example, of intentionally reducing lower-ranking employees to tears, even in the most extreme cases of faulty garnish placement.
Barry Foy at 4:24PM on 06/13/08
Though there's increasingly more women in the kitchen, in NYC it's *not* a female-friendly environment. You really have to be a hard individual... one of the guys. Maybe even *better than* the guys.
As a line cook, I was encouraged to take up residence in the all-female pastry department with shocking frequency (pretty impressive, considering I suck at pastry and have little experience in that environment) and it took far longer for me to move up through the ranks than the guys. All the dudes I worked with said that kind of bias was stupid (actually, they used words more harsh than that, but I'll leave that to the imagination), but there's really nothing you can do about sexism. It's still part of the business.
That said, TV and catering hold a lot more potential for women chefs.
missginsu at 4:58PM on 06/13/08
where are they? at home, fired for getting pregnant, like me. it's not just NYC that has a female-intolerant environment. as much as i love food, cooking and the restaurant industry, it's the last bastion of sexism, racism and ageism.
dmarina at 6:45PM on 06/13/08
I live in Seattle, a much more woman-friendly city when it comes to the restaurant biz, and I still get lots of people assuming I'm in pastry. Even other women.
I got my current job partially because I'm a woman. The new chef at my restaurant is a woman, and she's trying to not be the only one in the kitchen. With me, there are three of us, in a kitchen that employs almost two dozen people.
Sarah, it's good that you're acknowledging women in the industry, but make no mistake, women are grossly underrepresented in restaurant kitchens, and a good part of what's responsible for that is pure, unadulterated sexism. Women who are not chefs doing TV shows for other people, frequently women, who are also not chefs, isn't going to help much. Trying to claim that anyone who points out the sexism in the industry is wrong isn't helping, either.
thepictsie at 4:29AM on 06/14/08
...women are grossly underrepresented in restaurant kitchens, and a good part of what's responsible for that is pure, unadulterated sexism....
If women who truly love cooking and the culinary arts didn't have to machete their way through the "old boys' club" that's the restaurant scene in most cities, there would definitely be more of us in professional kitchens.
When a man embarks on a cooking career, he has to master cooking. When a woman embarks on a cooking career, she has to first overcome roadblocks of sexism before she ever gets to touch a knife. Why? It's a waste of time that could be spent doing what she loves - cooking, and/or running a restaurant.
Then, consider the flip side - when a man effectively runs a kitchen with an iron fist, he's "strong and in charge." When a woman runs a kitchen with an iron fist, she's a "bitch."
chiff0nade at 6:54AM on 06/14/08
Oh, and for many of us who want to cook professionally, TV and blogging and so forth are not at all appealing. It's not what we want. Why hell should we give up our ambitions and settle (and just because it isn't settling for you doesn't mean it wouldn't be settling for us), just because the industry doesn't like us as much as the boys?
thepictsie at 4:48AM on 06/15/08