Abstract
Taking the Heat begins with a simple, yet provocative question: “How is it that women—the gender most commonly associated with food and cooking—have lagged so far behind men in professional kitchens?” (p. 2) To answer this question, Deborah Harris and Patti Giuffre combine historical, textual, and interview analysis to interrogate the masculine world of professional cooking. Integrating Bourdieuian field analysis with the study of gendered organizations, the book’s insights extend beyond the professional kitchen. This is a story of how institutional processes, cultural evaluations, and the defense of precarious masculinity combine to preserve the inequities and exclusions of gendered occupations.
The book begins with a historical analysis of the gastronomic field, where the exclusion of women was essential to establishing the professional chef’s legitimacy. While domestic foodwork was naturalized as an expression of femininity, the chef brought a sense of mastery to his culinary labor. These distinctions between masculine expertise and feminine care-work continue to inform evaluations of professional cooking. Chapter two turns to contemporary food media, presenting an analysis of more than 2,200 articles and restaurant reviews. Here, we find women’s cooking described as nourishing, pleasing, and preserving tradition while men are revered for their artistry, skill, and innovation. The gendered contrast in these portrayals provides a striking illustration of how cultural intermediaries like restaurant critics contribute to a gendered hierarchy of occupational prestige.
After this historical and textual analysis, the book’s remaining chapters draw from interviews with 33 women chefs in Texas. From enduring stereotypes about feminine weakness, to pervasive sexual harassment, these women depict a work environment that is saturated with gender inequality. The fourth chapter outlines the limited options available to women chefs in leadership positions—between the assertive “bitch” and the feminine “girly-girl.” A preferred third option was the role of “mom” or “big sister,” a nurturing authority style that was seen as a source of “feminine strength” (p. 134).
The final empirical chapter shares the stories of women chefs who left their jobs in professional kitchens, which was the case for 17 of the 33 participants. These women emphasized the conflicting pressures of restaurant work and family life, particularly in the context of mothering. Long and inflexible hours, lack of benefits, and the inability to take time off made it almost impossible to balance restaurant work with parenting responsibilities. While women commonly framed this dilemma in terms of difficult “choices,” Harris and Giuffre challenge this individualizing framework. In the concluding chapter, the authors argue for a collective approach to addressing inequality in the gastronomic field, urging women chefs to join together to push for structural changes to the work environment.
While reading this book, I was particularly intrigued by how women chefs negotiate their own complicated relationship to questions of gender in the workplace. Despite overwhelming evidence of institutional sexism, demeaning stereotypes, and sexual harassment, many of these women were reluctant to criticize their jobs or their coworkers. Some suggested that enduring these hardships made them even better at the work they do. Many adopted a narrative of gender neutrality, ascribing success in the restaurant world to personality, work ethic, and talent—not gender. Yet, these same women articulated strategic efforts to manage their emotions and appearance in the kitchen in order to become “one of the guys”. The study reveals the ambivalence often embedded in narratives of gender and work, where stories of individual effort are more readily available than an acknowledgement of inequalities. I appreciated Harris and Giuffre’s effort to respect participants’ accounts of their own lives while also drawing attention to the inequities obscured by narratives of gender neutrality. I did wonder about the significance of race within these processes, discussed only once in relation to an African American chef who described her struggles as a “double minority” (p. 84). I was curious how intersections of race and gender shaped the experiences of other women within the study, as the professional chef has long been associated with both masculinity and whiteness.
Taking the Heat makes a timely contribution at a moment when chefs are the rock stars of foodie culture, and when media continue to debate whether women will ever “have it all.” With accessible writing and incisive analysis, this book is a great resource for the sociological classroom. Taking the Heat is not just a study of women chefs—although it is an excellent one of those. Harris and Giuffre provide a careful analysis of power, exclusion, and inequality, to better understand how “even the most gender essentialized tasks like cooking can be co-opted by dominant groups” (p. 202).