Sunday, November 17, 2013
Too Many Men in the Kitchen?
Today I stumbled upon an interesting article in The Week. It discussed a list that Time Magazine produced of the top 50 "gods of food" in America. Interestingly enough, there were only thirteen women present on this list, and among these thirteen women, none were actually chefs. This came as a big surprise to many, and The Week said that this must be because chefs are a male dominated profession.
Later in the article however, it is said that in reality about 20% of chefs now a day are women. This made some commenters very angry, that the Time gods of food list didn't contain any women even though the industry is actually 20% women. To me, two things stick out. First, I wonder how the editor of Time selected his "gods of food" list. Does he really believe that the only chefs worth divine recognition are males? And the second being that still after the fact, 20% seems like a low number of women in the chef industry. After all, haven't women been known to be the cooks in our families throughout American history?
It seems that a consistent stereotype throughout American history has been women as the cooks in a family. Most American families still run with this tradition, having the mother cook a homemade meal for the family each night. It seems odd to me that even though women have been known to be the chefs of the family, they in fact aren't the majority of chefs of today's world. Is this representative of the fact that men have also been portrayed as the breadwinners? Does a women have a place in the kitchen only in the comfort of her own home?
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I have to say that I am quite shocked that there would be no female chefs on the top 50 "G-ds of Food" list. I know that traditionally women are the cooks of a family, however, there are many women chefs. I would guess that many people still hold the belief (though they may not say so) that a women's role is as a homemaker, not in the professional world. I think that one could relate that belief to Sojourner Truth's famous line, "Ain't I a woman?" Women are often thought of as softer and gentler than men, so some might think that a woman could never handle the pressure and physical challenges of working in a restaurant kitchen. Those people couldn't be any more incorrect. Some of the greatest chefs are women such as Cat Cora and Alex Guarnaschelli who are both Iron Chefs. How have such stereotypes remained for hundreds of years even with all of the advancements in gender-based discrimination?
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