Despite a long-standing male-dominated culture in professional kitchens, more women are stepping up and speaking out as the industry slowly evolves.
In a recent interview on the subject of gender balance in Irish kitchens, well-known chef Darina Allen suggests that there may be a certain predisposition amongst men towards the business of preparing and cooking food:
“Men are hardwired to a certain extent,” she said in a piece published by the Irish Examiner in 2021. “You only have to see them cooking over fire, it definitely pumps up the testosterone. It’s an epigenic thing, deep in our psyche over generations.”
While she goes on to elaborate that more and more women are getting into the sector, these words offer some explanation as to why there are far more men than women working in our kitchens.
It’s estimated, in fact that there are roughly twice as many male chefs as there are female chefs working in Ireland today. As you go higher up the rankings, the dominance of male chefs becomes even more pronounced, with men accounting for approximately 79% of all head chefs over 90% of all executive chefs. It is only in the lesser roles (in terms of leadership levels) such as pastry chef and chef de partie that you see a majority of women working.
Should this be of concern or is it one of those industries where men are simply predisposed to doing the job better than women? Or is it a sector to which far more men are drawn?
A Masculine Culture
There is, of course, a very clear masculine culture attached to the kitchen. The late Anthony Bourdain, for example, wrote Kitchen Confidential, painting a scene of male aggression and testosterone-fuelled creativity. The top chefs seem to be the ones who are the toughest on the block and the ones who shout the loudest and throw the profanities and utensils about – the ancient hunter-gatherers willing to lay their sanity on the line to provide for the people. It’s no wonder, then, that a lot of young men are drawn towards this very masculine image and dominate the kitchenscape in the way they do.
Then there is the very militaristic design of the classic commercial kitchen. It’s all based on the principals of the highly influential 19 th -century chef Georges Auguste Escoffier, who revolutionised food preparation with a system based on rigid military discipline with a clear ‘chef’ (the French word for ‘boss’ or ‘leader’) at the top. Kitchens have a male- dominated design structure where a masculine culture dominates. Is it any wonder that it’s a place where female spirit finds it difficult to flourish or even breathe?
Voices from the Kitchen: Christine Walsh’s Story
Christine Walsh – Irish executive chef at Chisuru in London – spoke of some of her challenges in her successful career when speaking on the Oliver Callan Show on RTÉ Radio 1 on May 20 th last. She spoke of working in one particular restaurant in London where she would stop in an alleyway on her way to work just to get sick; such was her level of anxiety.
“It was because I was so terrified that I’d mess something up or somebody would say something to me,” she recalled, “because they were vicious… people were really vicious back then. Thankfully, I’ve come out the other side and I don’t see that, nor do I tolerate that kind of stuff.”
While she accedes that the atmosphere in kitchens generally is one of survival of the fittest, she says that as a woman, there was a tendency to throw more at her in order to get some kind of reaction out of her.
“And that was because you might have been one woman in a kitchen of ten men. It was rarely that I worked in a kitchen where you’d have any more than 2 or 3 women. And a lot of them were in pastry and I didn’t want to do pastry.”
She has experienced a certain level of bullying. As a younger chef, for example, one of the senior chefs in the kitchen she was working engaged in niggling bullying behaviour – the odd comment here and there and occasional overtly sexist behaviour, including taking off all his clothes in the changing room specifically to make any women feel uncomfortable – something that his male colleagues finally pulled him up over. There was also a common practice called being “pantsed” that Christine was victim of on more than one occasion.
“I had never heard of it before,” says Christine. “It’s horrendous – somebody comes up behind you and just pulls your trousers down and walks off in the middle of the kitchen. That happened me twice but the second time, I was prepared for it; I had worn tights underneath in a kitchen where it’s 25°. I was expecting it. I won’t name those people but they weren’t very nice.
“I suppose you learn to avoid things like that and deal with it. But as you go up through the ranks, you gain seniority and you have to learn to bite back just as hard because that’s the only way that people will leave you alone. I mean that sometimes you’d have to embarrass them more so that they don’t embarrass you again. It’s a horrible way to work but it worked for me and people left me alone, and that’s all I wanted – to be left alone and do my work.”
Culture, Choice, and the Path Forward
Alan Fitzmaurice, President of the Chef’s Table, says that sexism is a problem in the workplace. With a wife who is also a chef, he says that while part of the lack of women in senior positions in Irish kitchens comes down to lifestyle choices, there is no doubt that a male-driven culture exists.
“For a long time, it has been a very male-dominated profession,” says Alan. “I think that much of that has to do with a high number of female chefs choosing to stay at home and look after children once they’d reach a certain point in their career… and then unfortunately, many of them didn’t come back to the industry after they left.”
What percentage of female chefs have traditionally made that decision purely because they prefer to be at home and what percentage of them made the decision to get away from an uncomfortable atmosphere is the unknown quantity here. In the case of Alan and his wife, they were both able to successfully combine their careers with their family life by working opposite shifts (she working early morning and he working evenings and nights). And with improving work hours in hospitality, there seems to be an uplift in the number of female chefs in Irish kitchens.
“I also think that an all-male kitchen is very testosterone-driven,” adds Alan.
“As an executive chef, that can be too hard to deal with and at if you have a good mixture of sexes it tends to be a nicer environment to work in… I think it’s true to say that female chefs have to work a lot harder than their male counterparts. They need to work harder and faster and stay longer in order to get the same respect. That’s a terrible thing to say but it seems to me that that’s the way it often is, unfortunately… I think that if we keep it to the very simple thing that they’re all chefs regardless of their gender, we’ll hopefully see sexist behaviour in our kitchens disappearing.”
Another reason why the industry has been traditionally male-dominated is because traditionally, a chef de cuisine had to do a lot more of the heavy lifting, such as with large sides of beef and heavy crates of produce. When Alan sees young groups of chefs coming through, he feels confident of the future:
“When I see the young chefs on the teams now, I think that they have a lot of respect for one another,” he says, “and I hope that that will change the picture in the future.”
