Discrimination, Found Between the Flour and Sugar

Growing up in a family that has a mix of European and Japanese roots, my family culture was always a jumble of different traditions and family gatherings. All of these gatherings revolved around an extravagant meal that family members had poured countless hours into creating. Our Christmas dinners included a mix of meats, mashed potatoes, traditional American salads, and then platers lined with rows of sushi. Living in Gloucester, one of the most prominent seaports in Massachusetts, we always had a mix of seafood, different kinds of fish with perfectly crafted light sauces that would make your mouth water from the garlic smell rising from the stove. My family loves food and feels that food brings people together for hours of telling stories and laughing late into the night. In my family both of my parents cook all of our meals. My dad will cook his favorite dishes one night and my mother will cook hers the next night. This symmetry in my kitchen made me believe as a little kid that everyones family were like mine. Growing up in a predominantly Italian community, many of my friends were surprised that my dad would cook as well as my mom. Whenever I would go over for dinner at a friends house, their moms would always be the only people cooking, the dads in other rooms watching a football game and waiting for dinner to be ready. The family expectations in these large Italian families was that the moms and aunts and grandmothers would be the ones to cook large meals and make sure everyone was fed to the point where they felt as if they were going to explode. This always struck me as odd but it was their family tradition and I had mine.

I soon realized my family tradition was slightly out of the ordinary. I quickly grew to know and stereotype that women are meant to take care of the family and feed everyone while the men were the ones coming home from work tired and hungry, expecting dinner to be waiting. Women were in charge of preparing their children's meals for school and making dinner every night. While this may not have applied to every family it was still a stereotype for a reason and played into many areas of a women's life. I would hear people insult women for wanting jobs during the day because "who was going to make dinner that night?", "Who was going to make sure the kids were always fed?". These questions bothered me but I never truly realized the extend of these opinions. In our discussion on Monday night and from the readings,  I was shocked to learn that only 7% of all of Americas restaurants have female head chefs. This fact seems almost so comical to me. Women are expected by our society to feed their families and be the only ones cooking but then why wouldn't they be our best cooks and have the most experience for being a head chef? Our society wants to box women into being the cooks and not capable of having jobs because they must be constantly feeding people but they can't be actually payed for fulfilling this stereotype?

As we discussed in class and from the articles, we talked about how becoming a chef is a full time job with long hours and a certain level of commitment that requires you to be constantly in the kitchen creating new recipes and preparing dishes. Because of the long hours many restaurants won't hire women chefs because they believe women will have to sacrifice their family time and other aspects of their home life to be a professional. From this idea stems another stereotype that women cant give up taking care of a house and then children for jobs and that they won't be good a professional jobs because they have children and will always have to prioritize this aspect of their life over a professional job. This expectation and stereotype is ridiculous to me. Women should be able to have professional jobs and take care of a family at the same time. If a man can go out and work and then come home to his kids after school then why cant a women do the same thing? If male head chefs can still have a family and be there for their family then female head chefs should be able to do the same and should have the same opportunity to get head chef positions. Being discriminated for your gender should not be an excuse to prevent you from creating art and flavor in doing something you love.