<i>Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen</i>. By Deborah A. Harris and Patti Guiffre. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2015. Pp. x+246. $90.00 (cloth); $27.95 (paper).

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsTaking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen. By Deborah A. Harris and Patti Guiffre. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2015. Pp. x+246. $90.00 (cloth); $27.95 (paper).Sharon R. BirdSharon R. BirdIowa State University Search for more articles by this author Corrections to this articleErratum for book review of Taking the Heat by Deborah A. Harris and Patti GiuffrePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe idiom “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” was one of U.S. president Harry Truman’s favorites. The message Truman meant to convey was that if the people under his command lacked the physical and mental strength needed to succeed under pressure, they should look for another job. The type of kitchen to which the saying refers, it seems, was not the one associated with the 1950s media messages about the rapidly expanding and predominantly white suburbs. Domestic kitchens, according to the dominant media messages, were spaces where middle-class, white housewives enjoyed the luxury of new appliances that supposedly made cooking an endless delight. The high-pressure kitchens of idiomatic fame, on the other hand, must have been those associated with bustling restaurants in big cities, or perhaps the military kitchens where war-weary soldiers prepared food for fellow soldiers.Historians and social scientists, of course, have been deconstructing these and related understandings of gender myths and realities for decades. So why are the cooks touted as top chefs around the world today still predominantly men? Is it because they truly are the cooks who “can take the heat?” Deborah A. Harris and Patti Giuffre expand and deepen our understanding of these issues in their new book, Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen. The gendered distinction supported heavily by stereotypes between the cook who prepares food for a family and the chef who prepares food for patrons, as Taking the Heat reveals, has existed for as long as the notions of “private” and “public” domains have been around. The rise of culinary elitism and all of the accoutrements associated with the professional kitchen, however, have their origins in more recent history.Focusing mainly on the United States from the late 20th to early 21st centuries, Harris and Giuffre use archival newspaper and magazine data to outline the popularization, growth, and gender-exclusionary nature of professional cooking. Then, using qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 33 women chefs in the state of Texas, along with media data including over 2,200 restaurant reviews published between 2004 and 2009, the authors examine how the media has constructed chefs as men who advance the culinary arts through bold innovation while constructing home-style cooking as the domain of women. The authors use these interview data to reveal how the processes of becoming a chef, exercising leadership in professional kitchens, and sustaining a career as a chef are all highly gendered. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “fields” of cultural production (The Field of Cultural Production [Columbia University Press, 1993]) and Joan Acker’s model of gendered organizations (“Hierarchies, Jobs and Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations [Gender and Society 4:139–58, 1990]), Harris and Giuffre disassemble fundamental elements of the masculinized professional kitchen. In so doing, they answer crucial questions about why so few women, still today, are represented among the chef elite.In addition to Taking the Heat’s revelations about the role of the media in continually constructing professional cooking as masculine are the authors’ findings about how individual chefs navigate gendered barriers over the course of their lives and careers. Because professional cooking is so strongly associated with spaces of leisure and entertainment (for the customer or cooking show viewer, for example), the potential influence of the media on this occupation sets it apart from others commonly examined in social science research about gender and inequalities in employment. The spotlight of the media, the authors explain, has contributed to the masculinization of the profession, enabling many of the most elite men chefs to frame professional cooking in masculine terms and to convince the public and potential patrons that men are more equipped than women chefs to practice the culinary arts.Taking the Heat further provides the reader with a unique roadmap for understanding how women and men, as individuals, experience “gendered organization” in the context of paid labor. By mapping a chef’s career onto the life course of a person who, as she or he ages, confronts new challenges both in and outside of the professional kitchen, the authors highlight the intersections of age, gender, and parenthood and how in the current context of professional cooking these operate to advantage men and disadvantage women. By highlighting these intersections, Harris and Guiffre are able to draw parallels between the gendered organization of professional cooking and many other professions.Taking the Heat also raises many questions for readers about public policy and issues of social change. These topics, however, are less satisfyingly addressed in the volume. Harris and Guiffre argue that if women chefs could stand together in rejecting a subordinate status, harness media attention for themselves as women chefs, and band together in women-centered organizations to support and mentor other women chefs, greater gender equality in professional cooking, including employer-based policies for increasing work-life balance, could be achieved. But from where do the incentive, time, and money come for women chefs engaged in this kind of social movement? As the authors explain, professional cooking typically requires years of apprenticeship and other forms of practical experience while working for very low wages. Young people who pursue professional cooking, in addition, are far removed from the corporate elites who own media companies and from the policy makers who pass legislation. How will these women find the time, financial resources, and legal expertise needed for changing the professional cooking industry? Perhaps professional associations for women chefs, like other types of professional associations that have taken up similar gender equality causes, could help to pave the way. But for a true transformation, broader societal changes are surely required, including living wages for all low-paid workers, truly affordable health care, and state-supported child care. Unlike women in many other professions, the salaries, health care options, and child care choices for most professional cooks are typically very poor—leaving little if any time for social organizing around gender issues.These criticisms, I should note, do not detract from the fact that by focusing their analysis on an industry that touches the lives of most people who live in countries where, as in the United States, “eating out” is a daily occurrence, Harris and Guiffre enable us all to see that the changes needed to bring about greater gender equality in professional cooking are the same changes that will promote gender equality for everyone. Taking the Heat is a must read for gender scholars and students trying to tackle issues of gender inequality in paid labor in the modern U.S. economy. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 122, Number 1July 2016 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/686053 For permission to reuse a book review printed in the American Journal of Sociology, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.Related articlesErratum for book review of Taking the Heat by Deborah A. Harris and Patti Giuffre16 Sep 2016American Journal of Sociology

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