In restaurants, men are the default.

Men professionalized and have dominated the field, so women are considered less competent from the outset (Haddaji). This dynamic creates environments in which women have to “prove” their competence, working doubly hard to demonstrate that their womanhood—their status as other—is not an obstacle. Every woman I interviewed identified with this experience.

Near the start of her career B began working as an assistant at a mid-size, man-owned restaurant group. Despite her hospitality education and previously holding a position in business development, she had to earn the right to move up: “It was very personal task-based at first and I had to kind of prove my way to do more restaurant stuff.” She worked extremely hard to earn this recognition, “almost showing off how fucking crazy you can be about doing someone’s dry cleaning to prove that you can handle the important stuff.” B felt that this dedication was gendered: “I don’t think a man would have been as intense as I was. I came in there thinking, ‘I have something to prove.’ To prove…that I can be more intense than the boys.” 

Several other interviewees felt the same. “You constantly have to prove that you are worth their respect, that you’re worth their time, that you know what you’re doing,” explained J, a culinary consultant. O, a bar manager, reflected on her earliest hospitality experience as a teen, at a poolside burrito shop:

“I remember taking the order, making the burrito, rolling it up, delivering it to the person and then sweeping the floor frantically while all these stoney baloney boys were chilling by the grill and just not moving.”

From age 13 she understood she had to work harder than her man colleagues in order to move up, citing a constant experience of “being denied until you can prove yourself, whereas I think lot of the time with guys in restaurants, as long as they’re there for a certain amount of time, they kind of naturally fall up.” R, a former cook and HR consultant, echoed this sentiment: “When you’re a woman in the kitchen, you are perceived to be weak. I never wanted to be perceived as less than…so I just worked…I was always grinding in that kitchen.” 

“Proving” competence is consistently identified as one of the main barriers to women leadership across industries (Haddaji), because it causes women to simply leave the industry. It is unsustainable to operate at a breakneck pace just to get noticed. Each of these women felt required to display dedication in a way their colleagues who were men did not. As Harris & Giuffre have argued, “Women have to demonstrate they are exceptional to even be promoted to positions of leadership” (133). 

When these promotions do materialize they often come from women. When R was injured and unable to continue working in kitchens, her women supervisors enabled her to transition to a different role. “I doubt that I would have gotten that opportunity to do something else had I not been working for women,” she explained, “because they advocated for me, they spoke to my strengths versus my weaknesses.” For O, “the first management position I ever got was offered by another woman. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

It isn’t a coincidence.

Hospitality’s masculinized culture makes it challenging for women to advocate for themselves and when they do, they are often penalized. AH, who now works in tech, had a harrowing experience asking for paid time off. When I asked her what it was like in moments when she advocated for herself she responded with one word: “Awful.” She continued: 

“I remember sitting there shaking…at the end of the day it was like four days back. New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July. In the grand scheme of things it’s maybe $500 to give me these days off….[my boss] got so pissed off that he left the room. He got up, he threw a chair to the side and left the room.”

When B’ s position was terminated, she dealt with similar aggressive pushback: “They cancelled my health insurance without me knowing. I tried to talk to HR, and they were extraordinarily rude and gave me no answers and basically slammed the phone in my face.” S, who now works in creative management, “was just settled down” when she tried to speak up in a previous restaurant role. As a woman of color, she had to navigate compounding factors to get the salary and status she deserved. When she started at this restaurant group she was making $50,000 per year while her white, man colleagues were making between $80,000 and $100,000. “There was privilege there, and there was a way for them to advocate for themselves that I couldn’t have.” 

Constantly needing to advocate for yourself, and assessing whether or not it’s safe to do so, places a significant mental load on women in restaurants. As J explained: 

“As a woman or as any marginalized personality, you’re always choosing between what you want to say or do and what you want to accomplish. It is an exhausting trade off that quite simply white men do not have to do, which is why we have white male chefs screaming at people in the kitchen because they want things a certain way…women don’t have that luxury.”

In fact, despite being aware of the gendered challenges women in restaurants face, the ones I spoke with consistently blamed themselves. S suffered a workplace injury that caused permanent nerve damage in her shoulder, and “never even brought it up…because [I felt] it was my fault.” AH called herself “naive” and “dumb” for not realizing she would have to work major holidays at her restaurant group, despite the fact that no one explained it to her. C, a pastry chef now gearing up to open her own business, told me she was “lucky” that “nothing ever extremely traumatic was directed [her] way” in terms of sexual harassment. This individualization of systemic problems is in itself the product of a deeply masculinized culture. Women believe they are the problem, so they leave the industry and the cycle of masculinization continues.