Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Re What does it tell you - In most households the young girl growing up with her influential female peers doing the cooking, baking etc accepts this as her future role and therefore seeks a career elsewhere.

Interesting article

@Margaret - Wow. That’s a great point.

I agree with you. Far more women than men qualify as doctors, dentists, and physios, but you don’t hear about campaigns to get more men in to those jobs.

I just read your original post, and saw that you pretty much said the same thing as I did in my last comment, except for nursing.

Ummm… I too wonder why so few women work in tech jobs. Reminds me of the first, and only, IT@Cork network meeting I went to. I puzzled over why it was such a male gathering.
Women need computers as much men. Women are plentiful in PR & marketing. So why weren’t there more women there? I teased the organisers, thinking that they hadn’t made much of an effort to prevent such a male dominated forum.
I was also much less interested in going to future meetings. Anyway I was looking for a forum of developers and users.

Is the nerd a male? Geeks masculine? A lot of women blog?

I cook, but avoid the routine, day to day cooking. Not much of an answer this. But thanks for an interesting questions. I hope many others contribute.

The chef point is an invalid one. Professional cooking is a very very macho and cut throat industry that has long been v male dominated and distinctly unfriendly/welcoming to women. Women were seen as the waitresses and not capable of spending the hours, doing the lifting etc etc etc. The balance is starting to shift with some of the world’s best chefs being women, but they are still the exception.

Paul, I don’t think that you get that male dominated fields (i.e. professional cooking, tech, scientists, etc) create an environment that keeps it male dominated. Yes there are token success stories and women who unfortunately want to be the exception and don’t feel it necessary to mentor or support other women, but generally speaking the women that break the barriers are subjected to huge amounts of disdain, harassment and negativity.

Even in sales at an American company, I was faced with being called too aggressive, too male in my approach, being teased about how young I was and that I’d never find a man if I only cared about my job etc etc etc. You guys want to act as though this doesn’t happen, but I’ve worked in kitchens where the “chef’s” would try to make us cry and try to humiliate us and then blame it in PMS etc.

It is very hard to work in a kitchen where everyone from the dishwashers to the chef are commenting on your breasts or how you knead dough or how much you need a good seeing to. Or ask why you’re trying to be a man. As a prank a chef once went to the effort of breading and frying dish towels with prawn tails attached to make us think he was giving us a tasting on a new menu item. Funny that he only offered them to the women in the kitchen (all two of us). Now independently, you may think that was funny, but it was evidence of an overall culture of disdain and pushing us out. And it worked. Luckily I didn’t see myself as a chef-in-training, but this shit happens all the time across industries.

Jamie, most of us have had all those points made to us. I too was teased about being young when I was managing people much older than me. I too was teased about many things throughout my career.

The only aggressive person in the kitchen specifically is the head chef.

I agree with everything that you and other women say regarding equality in many industries. But if we go back to tech, there are no barriers other than perception.

I think we should be more focused on asking how we can help women in tech become more involved in the improvement of the ecosystem and get more involved in networking events.

I have followed this debate for the last few days and we have been writing about this topic for ages. There’s a disconnect somewhere as women should perform better in tech careers. They don’t though because fewer of them choose it as a career.

I think the chef analogy isn’t that relevant - I also know a bit about that environment as I was managing editor of industry title Caterer and Hotelkeeper for 3 years. The reason is that the culture is vastly different - kitchens are hot, steamy macho environments - read Marco’s autobiography White Slave - where being tough rules the day, not necessarily the place for a woman to be feel comfortable.

Milo’s is completely off radar with this one as he naively believes that the market has selected more males to work in tech as they are better…. simply its because more males go for jobs in tech, so there are more of them to choose from. To see a point by point rebuttal go to the post by my colleague Rebecca Thomson.

We need to get more women interested in technology at an early age - this would be a huge boost to everyone who works in the sector.

@James - it wouldn’t be such a macho area if it wasn’t full of men

I worked in the catering industry in the early 80’s and did want to become a chef and knew plenty of women who wanted to be chefs too but the industry kitchens were full of arrogant primadonnas who, ok could cook but their agressive temperment can turn most adult males into nervous wrecks never mind the women.Thankfully women have the good sense needed to walk away from these eejits (a bit like asking for directions when you’re lost) I turned to the home kitchen but 20 years later have returned to the catering industry to find very little has changed, it’s still a male dominated world, dominated being the opperative word. Making beautiful food and presenting it in a respectful manner doesn’t need to make you a bully, but unfortunatly the pressures of the kitchen seem to do that. PS I feel its a competitive streak most men have but very few women have that causes this in cooking and i.t. and sport. the jobs dominated by women havent got that competitive edge, they are the more caring professions. Thanks Marie