Women have come a long way from the days of discrimination in the work place, but there are other factors influencing women chefs from rising to the top in the kitchen. Here are the highlights from Laura Shapiro's excellent & timely article in Gourmet:
“...Take a look at the two liveliest and most influential restaurant scenes in the country. In one of them, women chefs are ubiquitous, and so successful that nobody even remembers the word “discrimination.” In the other, you could fit all the big-name female chefs in town under a single bus shelter.”
“The first, of course, is the Bay Area, where great women chefs have been flourishing for decades. It’s easy to see why they’re drawn to the area: Northern California is the nation’s farm-and-cuisine capital, one of the most inviting places in the world to cook and eat. It’s also the nation’s gender-liberation capital, where the notion of second-class citizenship for women hasn’t gotten a whole lot of play for well over a century. And then there’s the Chez Panisse factor. Alice Waters has always encouraged talented female cooks to train at her restaurant, many of whom have gone on to open their own local places—and in turn train more women.”“Compare that happy, pastoral scene with what’s going on in New York, the nation’s other major restaurant center. Here the high-end professional kitchens are overwhelmingly male. A handful of women chefs have made names for themselves, but the numbers are shockingly low for a food-mad city packed to the hilt with places to eat. Few women apply for the jobs that open up, and even fewer stick around to get promoted.
"Location, location, location. The problem for women chefs in New York seems to be New York. Restaurant work is gruelling everywhere; but the high cost of doing business in New York, as well as the maniacal pace of the city’s dining and social life, mean that chefs have little downtime. ‘In Chicago or San Francisco, you can close on Sunday and Monday if you want,’ says Anita Lo, chef at Annisa and Bar Q. ‘In San Francisco the last reservation is at 9:30 sometimes. Here you have to be open seven days a week, and late nights. You can’t afford to close, and if it’s a small restaurant, you can’t hire someone else to do your job.’ The conflict between that sort of schedule and any sort of family life stops many ambitious women in their tracks. What’s more, if you’re a woman who loves cooking, New York offers lots of more manageable ways to make a living with food. Catering, consulting, publishing, working in the food industry, being a private chef—women flock to these fields.”
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