December 04, 2010
Why Are There No Great Women Chefs?
Charlotte Druckman in Gastronomica:
It started a few years ago when I noticed that Food & Wine’s annual roundup of ten Best New Chefs always listed one token woman.
And it lingered.
In 2007 Michelin awarded French chef Anne-Sophie Pic three stars, making her only the fourth woman in her country’s history to receive that honor (fifty years had passed since the last of her sex had garnered that third sparkler).2 The following year, in the United Kingdom, it was considered breaking news when ten female chefs won any Michelin stars at all. The tabloid Telegraph announced: “It could be the beginning of the end for the foul-mouthed, macho, and defiantly male master chef. The number of women with Michelin stars has nearly doubled in just 12 months.”3
Then came the 2009 James Beard Awards gala, held after the ceremony and annually assigned a theme. “Women in Food” was the chosen motif, but since only sixteen of the evening’s ninety-six nominees were, in fact, women, it seemed like a cruel joke. In the end, only two of those sixteen went home victorious, out of nineteen winners total.4
Next, Phaidon announced the publication of its forthcoming cookbook Coco: 10 World Leading Masters Choose 100 Contemporary Chefs, for which one Alice Waters and nine of her male comrades each picked ten young chefs whose work they admire. Collectively, these culinary authorities managed to put fewer than ten women on the roster—less than 10 percent of the total talent featured.
Finally, in Bravo tv’s Top Chef Masters competition, a paltry three out of twenty-four American “Masters” were women. Really.
The “It” in the pit of my stomach was the sinking realization that female chefs do not attain the same recognition or critical acclaim as their male peers. No one doubts women’s abilities in the kitchen. They certainly have skill and creativity. So what is the problem? This conundrum reminded me of something I’d read in an undergraduate art history class, Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Her article was a watershed not just because it posed such a loaded question—a rhetorical device, as it turns out—but also because by posing that question Nochlin forced academics and feminists to challenge their own practices.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 05:31 PM | Permalink
Comments
Because they are too busy feeding their families?
Posted by: J.Hawkins | Dec 4, 2010 7:49:24 PM
exactly...
Posted by: maniza | Dec 4, 2010 10:23:16 PM
Not arguing, Jared and Maniza -- but that's also why there are so few prominent women surgeons, generals, and financiers. The interesting issues raised by this rather lengthy article are the personality traits that will make a chef prominent -- being both outrageous and canny, a flamboyant martinet with a business head. Do I need to tell you how many women are socialized away from those tendencies? When little girls who are born bossy are allowed to remain bossy -- not 'cause it's nice, but 'cause it's the way some of us are -- you will see many fields in which leadership is key opening up to women. A professional kitchen is not a mellow, cooperative hang; the one in charge must be extremely comfortable giving directions and buying no "human interest" excuses for why needful things don't happen. None of this has anything to do with being a talented cook, but with high comfort with stress and leadership, 80 hours a week.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 4, 2010 11:00:24 PM
Elatia, hmm that makes sense. Maybe it's like how there are relatively more female concert pianists than female conductors. Wonder if there's a general pattern.
Posted by: prasad | Dec 5, 2010 2:14:35 AM
Historically, the reasons are the obvious ones already stated, essentially being social mores. All of the arts, including the culinary arts (wine making,foraging, etc., as well)- literature, music, painting, scuplture - and all their permutations reach their highest expression through the feminine mystique. The statistics are skewed through the same historical prism, and myopic marketing,that has persisted - but will soon evolve and, perhaps, swing pendulum-like in another direction.
Posted by: stefan michael | Dec 5, 2010 12:06:35 PM
A significant underlying issue here is capitalist in nature: that bad-ass, competitive, obsessive/compulsive money-making defines success, rather than humane, cooperative, and healthy pursuits.
Posted by: lambness | Dec 5, 2010 12:14:10 PM
Prasad, it took auditions behind a screen for women to become an ordinary presence in the orchestra pit; it was necessary for deciders not to see -- at all -- the auditioning orchestral musician to become truly gender-blind in their selections. For the concert stage, it's a slightly different question, because a healthy dollop of charisma is necessary for success as a concert artist -- charisma here being the something beyond genius level interpretive skills that makes people want to watch Martha Argerich or Anne-Sophie Mutter as well as listen to them. The recently established Gilmore Artist Award -- big purse -- takes this into account in citing the "charisma necessary to sustain a concert career" as one of its criteria. The 2006 winner is the superb Ingrid Fliter.
Among conductors, you almost can't find one that was not, first, an instrumentalist. Some, like Daniel Barenboim and Placido Domingo, have been able to conduct as well as perform -- it's all about the latitude to decide at what level your participation in musical life should take place. Sir Georg Solti, a titan of the late mid-century, was a pianist who set that career aside to conduct; he has been quoted as making that transition after taking a hard look at where his "real strengths" lay. Do women have that same latitude? To decide that conducting is the way to go, and to pursue that direction? Well: Sarah Caldwell, Eve Queler, Marin Alsop, Judith Somogyi...and how many more?
I believe it's all a question of the psychology of socialization -- discerning where your real strengths lie, laying claim to that territory, finding people who will encourage you rather than ask you if you wouldn't be better off in some other niche. Many talented women are groomed to be helpless in identifying, pursuing and achieving what they really want and need. When I was a kid, the loss of all that talent was much greater, and more routine, than it is today.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 5, 2010 12:49:23 PM
Lambness, that's true. An acclaimed chef has to be a business success -- she can't be a brilliant failure. Not every great cook wants the vibe. It's a model that favors the driven and the highly competitive. But for men and women in the culinary arts who really ARE that way, I would no more tell them to chill and develop a humane management style than I would suggest to Lance Armstrong that being his personal best need not involve winning the Tour de France. Being a very successful chef is a specialized are of the culinary arts -- lots of highly talented people are either not fit for it or just don't want it. For those women who do want it, however, the gender barrier should get out of their way.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 5, 2010 1:11:06 PM
This pattern of male dominance is intrinsic to our religious underpinnings. It will not change until our fundamental beliefs change.
Posted by: Nel | Dec 5, 2010 8:42:19 PM
I don't understand why we are still wasting our time with this question. The answer is clear: men are better than women at everything. Get over it and make me a fucking sandwich. Wait... lemme do it.
Posted by: Parsley | Dec 5, 2010 10:03:14 PM
Elatia, to each her or his own, of course. Let those barriers fall! But if I had my druthers, I'd favor redefining what "success" is, and its bottom line would have little to do with business or profit.
Posted by: lambness | Dec 6, 2010 11:48:41 AM
"I'd favor redefining what "success" is"
Well we could look at the number of mouths that are fed by each gender as a measure of greatness.
It's just a given that food at home is always better than food at a restaurant, at least in my house, if you want another reference point.
Posted by: Carlos | Dec 6, 2010 12:01:26 PM
Carlos,
At last, we agree! I've never had a restaurant meal as good as an average meal my wife cooks at home. It's impossible. They don't care enough to make them fresh. Perhaps women are more motivated to cook for those they love and care about than to show off their "skills" for strangers too lazy to eat at home.
Posted by: J.Hawkins | Dec 6, 2010 12:47:00 PM
Guys, please. Would you compare a man who ran personal and family finances with a sure hand, who took care to earn enough that there was as good a family vacation every year as possible, and who was a good steward of such assets as he accumulated with -- George Soros? You might say that different skill sets were involved, even if, manifestly, both men were "good with money." The gifted home cook who makes dinner in a heartfelt way for people she loves and wants to nurture does NOT need to be compared, for validity, with a male or female restaurant chef who has enjoyed great acclaim. The 100 top chefs of the real world, not the television good squad, have actually more personality traits in common with George Soros than with a loving and skillful wife-mother who enjoys standing at the stove. It's not about how good the food, but how great the vision, the ambition, the hunger. Show me a splendid home cook with those personality traits and I'll show you a woman who needs to get out more. Nesters of either gender are not particularly risk-tolerant, even if some of those nesters can out-cook quite a number of highly ambitious people who participate in the restaurant industry. It's much more forward looking to compare apples to apples, in the hope that same-abled yet differently gendered people can compete with each other fairly, rather than that the women among them be cautioned that being a jewel priced above rubies tending the home fires is where they can really shine. An important part of feminism is systematically dismissing the spurious comparisons that hold women back.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 6, 2010 4:24:19 PM
Meh. Thousands of stereotypes, battles against them in the beginning then embraces them at the end. I don't get it. So more chefs are male than female, so what? Maybe men, for biological or social reasons, tend to be more attracted to the chef career? And maybe they tend to be better qualified or have a better chance of success? Why must it be that exactly half of the chefs in the world are women?
Posted by: billy | Dec 6, 2010 11:18:30 PM
Billy, acclaimed chefs who spent their 20s and 30s in the kitchen, for 16 to 18 hours a day, and who finally discover the joys of parenthood, are like other highly driven people who don't work in kitchens but do create more time to actually raise their children, now that they are successful. It's quite a typical profile for the Type As of this world who are not entirely too compulsive to switch gears, and it's not about embracing or defying stereotype but reprioritizing. In other highly competitive fields -- such as medicine -- we are beginning to see about half men, half women as physicians in training. This isn't a quota, but a natural result of barriers to women coming down. The top flight professional kitchen should be no different.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 7, 2010 12:21:02 AM
Elatia, until you can see that being excellent and being competitive are two different things, you'll never be able to do more than make excuses for things as they are.
Posted by: Frank | Apr 2, 2011 5:35:18 PM
Thanks for reading Frank! I actually know the difference very well. I am a chef who thinks a lot more about excellence than about competing. I over-deliver a brilliant product, and make a living doing that. My reputation could not be better. If, however, someone less talented than I came along with a better business plan and a willingness to work harder for less (one superb definition of competitiveness, and being able to make a client a competitive offer), I would lose business to that person. People with their minds on excellence are very vulnerable to people with their minds on competitiveness. People who know how to compete have big advantages over people who put excellence first, figuring it will be rewarded often enough. Highly competitive people now how to make excellence seem relatively unimportant -- if you work for a living, you may have noticed something like this in your own field. Also, to acknowledge things are the way they are is not the same as making excuses for it.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Apr 3, 2011 12:58:59 PM
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