There are five major arguments, almost always supplied by male chefs, given in an attempt to explain the absence of women at the upper echelons of the profession. The first three of these factors are said to be related to the physiological differences between the sexes and the remaining arguments are almost always phrased in terms of psychology.
- The physical work required of the chef is too difficult for most women.
- Because of their need and desire to have and raise children, women are not suited to the long hours required of the chef.
-Women do not have the same level of taste sensitivity as men and this disqualifies them from the creation of great cuisine.
- Women perceive cooking as personal, while men take pride in food per se and are able to detach it from the eater.
- Women do not have the managerial skills necessary to over- see a large kitchen.
All of this may sound reasonable enough at first glance but on closer examination each of these so-called explanations fails to meet the tests of either logic or reality. The argument, for example that chefs need great physical stamina in order to lift the huge pots in a professional kitchen, to carry heavy cartons of meat, vegetables and fruits, and to stir the sauces in soups in preparation for a large number of diners may have been true during the Middle Ages but has not been true for at least four hundred years. One wonders, for example about those women who had the same problem of long hours and physical labor when they dominated the kitchens of the homes of the well-to-do English, French, Russian and Italian families between the 15th and 19th centuries. Today, while no one would deny that the work of the chef is physically demanding, modern chefs are rarely called upon in a single day to shift four to five tons of furniture, to sweep, mop and vacuum large areas of floors, to clean ceilings, to scrub toilets, or to carry heavy bags of grocery supplies - all tasks that are fulfilled on a daily basis by women who maintain the traditional roles of the housewife.
The second major argument, that chefs are required to invest long, frequently unconventional hours and are often called on to work split-shifts, is a valid one, easily explaining why many people do not advance to the top ranks of the chef's profession. The important (and logical) point, however, is that the argument has no more validity for men than for women and this is demonstrated by the already large and constantly increasing number of women in the professions of medicine, law, nursing, law-enforcement, psychiatry, and journalism, all of which frequently require equally demanding hours in the work place. Also with regard to the question of time commitment, some claim that women do not advance in the ranks of chefdom because the path to success demands a long and difficult apprenticeship. That such an apprenticeship is essential to the development of a fine chef is undeniable, but it is equally a part of becoming a fine surgeon or attorney. Interns and residents in hospitals are often required to be on duty for 48 or more hours, and no distinction is made between married or unmarried men and women when duty rosters are drawn up. Such long and devoted hours are no less a part of earning a doctorate in sociology, anthropology or psychology, professions in which many women are found.
That the marital status of a women or her status as a parent influences her ability to work long and often irregular hours is a valid statement, especially in traditional families where the wife is expected to carry the main burden of maintaining the house, doing the shopping and taking care of the children. It does not, however, reflect on the ability or desire of single women or on those whose partners are willing to share the burdens (and, if one likes, pleasures) of the home.
The third argument, that women are genetically lacking the fine sense of taste discrimination that men are born with is nothing more than nonsense. This bit of fallacious folk-wisdom, which dates back to the days of the Egyptian pharaohs, has simply no basis in reality and many biological research studies have demonstrated unequivocally that sex alone has no impact whatever on taste discrimination. A related and equally frivolous argument, that women are so concerned with their figures that they will never be able to taste enough to develop discriminating palates is equally easy to dismiss. As is evident to anyone with even a basically sound sense of vision, many of the better known male chefs of today are quite slim. There has never been a requirement for great chefs to be fat.
The fourth argument, about the differences in how men and women perceive food is perhaps the most fascinating one. Historian Page Smith, states that "while women may be great cooks, very few are capable of becoming great chefs". As her justification for this statement, Smith writes that "woman's cooking is personal ... she cooks for those she loves and wishes to nurture and her cooking is thus sacramental. A famous chef, on the other hand, is a culinary artist, and this is something quite different, for the male chef takes pride in the food per se and is able to detach it from the eater. Women cook for the people they love. Men cook for the sake of art". There is logic to this argument, but it is a logic based on the fact that for thousands of years women have been assigned the joint roles of nurturers of the family and housekeepers. Sociologist Liora Gvion of Tel Aviv University hypothesizes that because these roles have traditionally been devalued and that because most women still cook at home they will resent the idea of cooking as a career for "as modern as they may conceive themselves, they still perceive cooking as a female domestic task".
The argument that women do not have the managerial skills to supervise a large kitchen is obviously fallacious, and this can be seen by studying the increasingly large number of women who are hospital administrators, senior editors of newspapers and magazines, and corporate executives, positions that frequently require the organization and supervision of staffs far larger than those found at nearly all of the world's great restaurants. The claim that women are not capable of supervising or organizing men can be dismissed in precisely the same manner.
The truth is that the reasons most often given to explain why women are not great chefs are not valid. The painful reality is that women have not become great chefs largely because men, willingly or not, have chosen to monopolize the field. Many men who encourage or "allow" women to enter the kitchen, often do so only at an entry level and rarely allow them to rise to that point where they will become serious competition for themselves.