Why are most famous chefs male?
Because most chefs (famous or not) are male. I recently heard a radio interview with Anthony Worral Thompson (British celebrity chef) and they asked him this. He replied that women are often put off by the proffesional kitchen environment, which can be hot, noisy, crowded and full of machismo and coarse language. I don’t know if that’s true, but in my experience of catering, women often don’t last particularly long in a proffesional kitchen because the men who already work there often have a very macho, if not outright sexist attitude (it always suprised me how many chefs are ex-armed services), they worry that a woman will not be able to “stand the heat” so to speak, and make a big deal of shouting, rushing and bullying her to prove how hard kitchen life is as if to test her resilience. It takes a very tough woman (or indeed person!) to put up with that without walking out.
