Essay: Occupational sexism

Occupational sexism refers to any discriminatory treatment based on a person’s gender that occurs in the workplace. The effects of sexism in the hospitality industry have become more than noticeable to female cooks, chefs and managers trying to make a difference in their workplace and their chosen field. For hundreds of years, our society has pointed towards women to do the cooking for the men and children of the household. Yet it is working women from all walks of life – women from culinary school, women from business school, women with no degrees, even women with tons of experience who have the hardest time trying to move up in the hospitality industry. In Taking the Heat : Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen authors Deborah Ann Harris and Patti Giuffre beg the question “How is it that women—the gender most commonly associated with food and cooking—have lagged so far behind men in professional kitchens?” In this paper I will outline ways sexism in the restaurant industry takes place and what effects it has. This disparate treatment is important and frankly, should be considered unacceptable.
“Go back to the kitchen.” There’s “Make me a sandwich.” Can’t forget “Grab me a beer” and all of the other misogynistic phrases men have thrown at women for years. Women are told to go back into the kitchen, but when they do they are put up against a number of men who are not very welcoming. Professional women enter the restaurant industry and they’re greeted with a healthy dose of sexual harassment. The restaurant industry has the highest rate of sexual harassment claims, with ninety percent of women reporting sexual harassment. With 345,711 men making up the workforce, the majority of men assigned to management positions and seventy-one percent of restaurant servers being young women, one can quickly assume the abuse of power that routinely happens. Harvard Business School conducted a study to analyze sexual harassment over a period of three months in 2017. “On the first day of every month, the women read a list of 16 sexual harassing behaviors and reported which ones they’d experienced at work. 20 of them reported at least one sexual harassment incident during one of the months; 23 reported an incident during two of the months; and 33 reported an incident during each of the three months. Over the three months, the women reported 226 incidents of sexual harassment; 112 of the incidents involved coworkers, 29 involved a manager, and 85 involved customers.” It’s not just women being effected, either. Seventy percent of men reported sexual harassment in 2017. Participants of this study revealed that they found their coworkers saying this casual harassment was just “part of the job.” This includes subjects like attempts to talk about sex, crude sexual remarks, telling suggestive sexual stories, and sexist comments. Clearly, this behavior has become normalized within the business.
The average male chef currently makes over six grand more than his female counterpart. They make a decent amount more for doing the same job, yet female chefs are held to different, higher standards than men chefs. They have to take extra time to figure out how to speak to their staff without seeming aggressive, whereas men can basically go buck wild in their kitchens. “The circumstances of various workplace cultures and the day-to-day inter-actions between coworkers play a significant role in disadvantaging women chefs as they attempt to move up within the gastronomic field. Part of these interactions includes the leadership styles that women chefs adopt in their careers and how their (often male) coworkers respond to having a woman in a managerial position.” In Taking the Heat : Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen, Harris and Giuffre explain how if women adopt a masculine leadership style, they are seen as trying to be a man and are instantly labelled as “authoritarians” who are trying to act like a man. If they go the more feminine and friendly route, they are labelled as “girly girls” and as a result, not taken seriously. The final style discussed is the “mom” or “big sister” style. This is biologically more natural, and seems to be favored over the other styles of leadership women chefs employ. So on top of their job responsibilities, female executive chefs need to adjust their tone just to accumulate basic respect from their employees.
As Sheryl Sandberg has said, “as men get more powerful they get more liked by men and women, and as women get more powerful, they’re less liked.” The effects of sexism in this industry are clear to any woman who’s ever been a rockstar at their place of employment. As a female cook, if the head chef moves you up, your coworkers are suddenly less than friendly. So you either up the ante and become that competitive, aggressive cook, or you learn to play dumb and be the “girly girl.” Along with trying to balance one’s tone at work so as not to offend others, the woman cook is faced with sexual harassment and silently (and sometimes verbally) told by everyone surrounding her to accept it. The sexism trickles down from managers to people in lower positions, who reinforce it. As a result, anxiety and stress flourish while employee morale is badly damaged. This in turn affects the turnover rate of the industry, which is already a whopping 73%.
To lower sexual harassment rates, there are many actions that can be taken. Firstly, managers can speak to their staff and make it clear that any remarks of a sexual or sexist nature are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Since many people in higher positions of power perpetrate these actions toward their staff, perhaps an online form regarding reporting incidences of unfair treatment could be put to use. Many women do not report sexual harassment due to fear of retaliation as they can be trivialized by their organizations.
In conclusion, there are many negative effects of sexism in the hospitality industry that affect people in the workplace everyday. This includes sexual harassment – which leads to anxiety and other serious issues. Another effect is normalization of these harmful behaviors, which makes those affected far less likely to report such incidences.