Women Rule the Kitchen, But Not the Best Ones

Men continue to dominate most labor sectors, but women rule in one of them: The food service industry. Still, they are not getting the most prestigious jobs in the kitchen.

Women represent only six percent of the head chef positions at 15 prominent U.S. restaurant groups, according to restaurant critic Ryan Sutton. He wrote about it recently for Bloomberg News, before he moved to the website Eater.

Sutton explained it's not clear why there aren't more female chefs. He said most restaurateurs he interviewed struggled to give him an explanation, especially considering that women are in high positions in the administrative side of many restaurants and are graduating from cooking schools at almost the same rate as men.

He said one of the most eloquent answers came from Katie Greco the director of operations, head of human resources and managing partner of the restaurant Craft in the Flatiron district. Sutton said she attributed it to the fact that a lot of women want to have a family. "And it can be difficult to have a family, have kids at a restaurant industry job, which is a physical job, a labor-intensive job where you are on your feet often from before noon until well after 1 a.m., in some of these fine dining restaurants."