Ladies First — What it Means to be a Woman in the Industry
When my partner, a cooking instructor at a local event space, sat down to breakfast one morning and told me he had been groped at work, I didn’t exactly believe him right away. “You were what?” I sputtered through my coffee. I sat grinning at the tall, burly, tattooed man sitting in front of me and waited for the punchline.
He explained how a participant in his class, a woman in her late 40s, had copped a feel right in the middle of layering custard for Hungarian kremes. “You’re so muscley!” she squealed, ignoring the pastry lesson altogether and instead fondling his pectorals. She was having so much fun that she invited another woman standing nearby to try it for herself, to which she happily obliged. Jonathan Forsythe, my partner, stood there while they clucked and cooed at him. Later, when he mentioned it to the other chef on site, she chuckled and shrugged it off. “It happens all the time,” she told him.
It was such an odd experience, and one that we both struggled to process. Not only had he been touched without consent, there was a pretty good chance it would happen again. Had the genders been reversed and a female chef found herself the unwitting recipient of two simultaneously grabby men, we most certainly wouldn’t have been feeling so ambiguous in our response. In an industry notorious for its exploitative and overtly sexualized treatment of women, we don’t have much space left to talk about what it means when our own behaviour goes bad and when it discriminates and disrespects those around us.
My gut was telling me that I should stand up for my partner — who was, like so many of the people I know in the industry, a decent, lovely and sensitive human being — but, I had to admit, my hands were tied. And small wonder. This is uncharted and treacherous territory, especially for women, who have long tolerated abuse in male-dominated kitchens and restaurant hierarchies. We’re in desperate need of safe spaces so there is no more compromising of careers and no more harassment, gender-based or otherwise. While there is plenty of female fan-fodder to go around: the best-of lists and magazine photo spreads, countless culinary events, cookbooks, restaurants and TV shows, we still have a long way to go, wading through the muck of #metoo and the relentless lechery of the meglomaniac restauranteurs (and winemakers) lurking in its blackness.
So, what could I say?
Not long after, it was a female friend of mine who told me of how she went to work everyday in a kitchen with her stomach in knots. The executive chef, also a woman, had taken to building the camaraderie among her mostly male team with gusto — but had decided, for whatever reason, to isolate my friend from the rest of the group. “I’m lucky if she says two words to me during my entire shift,” my friend later told me. The chef would overtly single her out for criticism, even accusing her of sabotage when she “selfishly” came into work one day feeling a bit under the weather. Eventually, my friend tucked tail and retreated her way out of the job.
Then there were the instances that were far more aggressive. I worked with a young woman once who notoriously tracked her conquests like a bloodthirsty mercenary. She would rack up a score of “kills” — that is, men she had conquered sexually. She was a threat at staff parties, where she would often corner men with explicit, drunken advances, even with their partners standing in plain sight.
Luckily for her, I was nowhere to be seen when Jonathan firmly shut her down. But that wasn’t the end of it. He continually finds himself in situations that, while less reprehensible, still reek of a double standard. When he tried to point out the sexist overtones to a colleague, a female chef, who was chiding their male colleague for, in her words, “plating like a man,” he was waved away with a, “Oh, you’re fine.” She went back to her prep work, leaving Jonathan a bit baffled. Should he be fine, he wondered? Was there no room for his voice to speak out against sexism?
I explained this to Jenna, a friend and fellow server, while we tucked in for a quick plate of curry and kale salad at the Green Door over lunch one day. They immediately understood the desire to want to “other” men in the industry. “Women, minorities, LGBTQ2 have been pushed to the fringes for so long,” Jenna told me, pointing to the ongoing prevalence of white, male privilege in the industry, “I get wanting men to identify with the feeling of being othered.”
The problem though, Jenna went on to explain, is that it just winds up being another form of othering — where certain people are excluded, whether intentionally or not, by the language and behaviour of those around them. “Some men are allies,” Jenna said, “so why exclude them? We need them in the conversation.”
A few weeks before, Jenna pulled me aside as we were about to work a dinner service together. I was informed that I had misgendered them (that is, I had used a gender-based pronoun) and explained to me that Jenna used the pronouns “they” and “them.” No big deal, they said, but just so you know. I immediately appreciated them telling me and for including me in the conversation.
I imagined what a relief it must have been for Jenna, who had been lumped into a gender identity that didn’t belong to them. That’s when it hit me — where does someone like Jenna, who identifies as non-binary, fit in an industry that increasingly singles out women?
“I think it’s great that women are celebrated, but I am excluded from that,” they told me. For Jenna, navigating spaces in hospitality — and in service where “ladies first” is the general rule — is a constant reminder that the gender gap is a much bigger battlefield than just two sexes. “The issue for women and men is often about being able to see the other side. Except there are no sides,” Jenna proffers, “because gender isn’t binary.”
Could gender-neutral spaces — where we shed the language of a gender binary and don’t assume anyone’s gender just by the way they look — be the thing to deflate the power of our gender differences that have come to dominate behaviour in our industry? Imagine if it didn’t matter where you landed on the gender spectrum and you were celebrated simply for being a good human.
In my mind, Amanda Kludt, the editor of Eater, nailed it when she wrote: “Women are not curiosities… they are neither a different species, nor a different category of human.” Women, according to Kludt, aren’t rare and mythical creatures after all — they’re just people — and placing women on a pedestal can feel an awful lot like an island. While we can hardly deny the need to protect each other from the vile tendencies of the industry’s bottom feeders or even to recognize that incredible strides have made us visible, we risk creating spaces that continue to push people to the fringes.
But despite the carnage on the culinary front, I can’t help but feel a seismic shift rocking the industry. The very nature of hospitality leads me to believe that safe spaces are possible, but they must make space for everyone. Does that mean we should stop celebrating women in the industry? Absolutely not — but why celebrate them because they are women?
Not too long ago, I found myself out for a leisurely bike ride with a person in the industry who I madly admire. Lauren, a wondrously deft and creative entrepreneur, had set up her darling café in my neighbourhood four years before and it quickly became my de facto office. Our friendship solidified that afternoon as we managed to align our busy lives for a few hours of cruising along the Rideau River together. We reached the Tavern on the Falls, where we stood and sipped aperol and kombucha spritzes beside the dramatic intersection of our two mighty rivers and dove deep into shop talk. We poured over all the new must-visits — Gongfu Bao on Bank Street, The Jackson in the OAG and Palmier, a bright and playful café in Chelsea. We drooled over their exquisite design bits and toasted the all-star femmes who had helped make them possible.
The next photo Lauren pulled up was of five young women standing side-by-side, each wearing the signature striped apron of Fraser Café. They grinned, looking unfettered after a long and busy service, their chef whites still crisp. They represented the first all-female kitchen team in the restaurant’s 10-year history. Lauren was delighted. “Look at them! Aren’t they amazing?”
I nodded emphatically. They were, without a doubt, amazing. We’ve come second in the industry for so long that surely we deserve a crack at what it means when ladies truly do come first.
But our legacy remains to be seen. My hope is that, as women take the lead, we will aim to create places and spaces that are genuinely hospitable and sensitive to all voices. Voices from people such as Jonathan and Jenna. Our future in food, and everywhere else, needs to be one where no one is left out because of who they are — or who they aren’t. “When I hear 'the future is female'... ," Jenna looked at me and shrugged. “The future is inclusive. That’s how we move forward."
