Where are all the women?

Stefan Breg

It’s a Man’s World: where’s the female talent in our business and why are we stopping them from climbing the career ladder?

Half the population are women. Honestly; I don’t even need stats to support this. So let’s explore the role of women in our industry. They’re generally serving in restaurants or hotel front desks; some are managing, few are owning, frankly not many. Why is that?

I recently sat on a panel here in the Middle East and asked the question as to when we would get more female chefs at senior level; a female executive chef or celebrity chef of the calibre of Angela Hartnett.

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One answer given by a fellow panelist was that some women make good chefs, some ‘can concentrate’ and do ‘quite a good job’. I felt a gasp in the conference room; we all moved swiftly on.

I’m glad to say that we have some talented and established female hotel GMs in the area. I’ve seen some female restaurant managers too but rarely do we find female F&B managers in hotels. Even rarer are female business owners and entrepreneurs, with notable exceptions like Baker & Spice, Kozi Africafe, Switch, Bloomsbury’s, Lime Tree and the original Cafe Ceramique and Steam Sum Dim Sum.

Where’s the female talent? There are talented chefs like Gabrielle Hamilton (Prune, NY), Clare Smyth (Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Chelsea) Anna Hansen (Modern Pantry, London), Margot Janse (Le Quartier Francais) and Hélène Darroze (Connaught, London).

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