Method.
A bit of detail on how I went about constructing, researching and bringing this project to life.
Scholarship.
Power has shifted into the hands of this industry’s majority women workers, which only reinforces the need for more research on gender and restaurant labor.
The scholarship in this field is nascent. There are very few published texts on the intersection of these subjects, two of which have heavily informed this project. In Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen (2015), sociologists Deborah Harris and Patti Giuffre argue that women chefs struggle to achieve high-ranking positions because they represent a feminization threat. Fields dominated by women are lower in status and in salary than those dominated by men; therefore, professional cooking must remain masculine in order to retain its cultural standing. Harris and Giuffre provide a rich history of how cooking became masculine, and they examine how this gendering persists today in the form of biased food media and brutal working conditions that are disproportionately difficult for women to overcome.
More recently, Rachel Black published Cheffes de Cuisine: Women and Work in the Professional Kitchen (2021). Hers is a particular examination of gender inequity in the restaurants of Lyon, France. While she initially set out to trace the history of Les Mères Lyonnaise—a group of early twentieth-century women heralded as the “mothers” of Lyonnaise cuisine—Black found that history had not assigned them enough importance, resulting in limited source material (which on its own is telling). Instead, she analyses the hurdles facing women chefs in France, which begin in culinary training and end with a persistent exclusion from the country’s prestigious award systems. Black was pregnant for much of her field work as a culinary student and apprentice, which enlivens this book with a highly relevant and powerful perspective.
Outside of academia, popular media has done a thorough job reporting restaurant sexism—particularly since #MeToo entered the industry in 2017. Newspapers, magazines and online publications are invaluable in that they reach an audience far greater than that of a journal article. Eater and The New York Times, for example, have been particularly powerful tools in getting the public to understand the inequities of the restaurant industry. Still, the fast-paced nature of media means that these stories often lack the in-depth research and data collection of more scholarly sources.
It’s my hope that Asking For It can bridge the gap between academia and media, offering well-researched analysis in a digestible (and free!) format. Additionally, while scholarship in this area has focused almost exclusively on chefs, I have adopted a wider lens including women across restaurant roles, with one noticeable exception: sommeliers. The wine industry is grappling with its own misogynistic history that should not be conflated with that of restaurants, though they do often overlap (see: Wine Girl by Victoria James). Finally, my project centers the COVID-19 pandemic and #MeToo: two earth-shattering events for women in restaurants that have to date been left out of most scholarly research in this area. Their exclusion is simply a consequence of lengthy publishing timelines—something this self-published website doesn’t require. In short, Asking For It’s central goal is to add to the foundation that Black, Harris, Giuffre and dozens of journalists have laid over the past ten years.
Whether you are a restaurant worker, a scholar or a diner, my hope is that you come away from this project equipped with a bit more information on why restaurants are so inhospitable to women and what you can do about it.
Method.
To gather primary data for this project I conducted in-depth interviews with 9 cisgender women who currently work in or who have worked in restaurants. These conversations were qualitative and wide-ranging; while I prepared guiding questions, I didn’t restrict or dictate the subjects we covered. The interviewees range in age from 28 to 49 and have held jobs across the industry as servers, cooks and chefs, administrators and business owners. Some are single, others are partnered or married or separated. A few are beginning to plan for children, and 1 is a mother herself. 5 are white and 4 identify as women of color (WOC).
This industry is small, and in the interest of anonymity I have included as little identifying information as possible. Throughout this project, I refer to women by their first or first and last initials.
A final note on language: I use “woman” and “man” as descriptors instead of “male” and “female,” because the former are identifies and the latter, biologies. For example: “women chefs” instead of “female chefs.”
Limitations.
Asking For It is a start, not an end.
I freely acknowledge that there are a handful of limitations to this project. Firstly, strict anonymity has restricted the intersectionality of this project. I will be expanding the scope of this work in the coming year to include more specific analysis of BIPOC, queer and trans women in restaurants, but for now gender remains my primary category of analysis. Secondly, my sample size is admittedly small. The experience of these 9 women is of course not representative of that of all women. Still, many common experiences and themes emerged during our conversations, which I developed into the barriers considered in this project.
Lastly, this topic is an enormous, ever-evolving one—particularly as the restaurant industry continues its pandemic-spurred transformation. If you have feedback or additional resources, or would like to collaborate in some way surrounding these issues, I want to hear from you.
Acknowledgements.
Many people have touched this project in one way or another including, unsurprisingly, a cohort of powerful women. I am indebted first and foremost to the 9 women who agreed to speak with me with such vulnerability, thoughtfulness and intellect. I am exceedingly grateful to Professor Laura Sabattini, whose class sparked the idea for this project, and to Professor Amy Bentley, who supervised not only this work but most of my graduate career with such patience and endless encouragement—through a pandemic, no less! Finally, I have to thank the students in my research applications class (i.e., dissertation support group). Your feedback and encouragement brought Asking For It to life.