She Wants to be Treated Equally in the Kitchen

Restaurant kitchens are notoriously high-pressure places to work, with long hours and the demand to get everything done both rapidly and perfectly. Radio Rookie Jessica Eng recently graduated from the Food and Finance High School in Manhattan and her dream is to become a pastry chef. But she's run into some unexpected challenges.

Jessica reports on her experiences with sexism in the food industry.

At my first internship, the pastry chef I worked for was a woman. I wound up with full responsibility over the pastry station and even won employee of the month. But during my last internship, all the other bakers were men and they treated me differently from how they treated each other. They thought I didn't know how to mix dough, so they’d show me how to do it again and again. And if we needed more flour, they always sent someone else to go get it. They thought I wasn’t strong enough, but I was. I started to wonder if it was because I was the only woman in the kitchen.

After three months, I decided to quit my internship. I felt liberated. Working in that atmosphere made me feel so ignored.

Food historian Linda Pelaccio told me professional cooking has always been a very masculine pursuit. Restaurant kitchens came from military kitchens. That’s why they have a hierarchy. There is only one "chef," which comes from the French for "head of the restaurant" and they have many cooks work under them.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women chefs earn 20 percent less than men. Last year, women made up almost 40 percent of cooks but only about 20 percent of chefs and head cooks. 

A few weeks after I quit, I went back to see my former boss, Chef Jules, to ask him what he thinks about women in the culinary industry.  

I also asked him for advice. He told me that I should be less shy. "Concerning your personality, you have to be a little more outspoken, don’t be scared to ask questions — you already do that, so that’s great. You have to get yourself respected by everybody in the kitchen, take initiative, like really try things and don't be scared of trying, always trying," he said. I thought he was going to tell me to keep working really hard and to stay passionate! I didn’t expect advice about my personality.

That made me wonder — is it me or is there sexism? It’s impossible to ever be 100 percent sure.

He told me he had never seen an employee who was put down just because she was a woman, but he admitted that as a man it's harder for him to be aware of sexism. He said, "I hope I never did it to you or to any woman that I worked with."

I told him “no,” but it was because I was scared. I should’ve said that I did experience it in this kitchen. I don’t really blame him for not seeing it; there are a lot of people who don’t recognize it. And some of that was on me, because I didn’t tell him how I felt.

So I went back to talk to him. I told him I hadn't been completely honest and that I felt uncomfortable in the kitchen with some of my coworkers. "I'm sorry for not seeing that and for not doing anything about it," he said.

I knew there was sexism in the world, but I didn’t think it was something I’d ever encounter. I wonder if now Chef Jules will notice when someone’s being treated unfairly — even before they have to point it out.