7 need to know Korean chefs

From STEM sciences to cinema direction and business, women are underrated and overlooked. This is no more less the case in the male-dominated culinary industry. A Bloomberg analysis of restaurant groups in the U.S. found that only 6.3% of head chef positions were held by women in 2014 and even the world of food critique is largely male-dominated. Only four women in Michelin’s 103-year history (British edition) have been honored with three stars and Rebecca Burr became the guide’s first female editor three years ago. An online search for “female chef” on Naver will bring you to a few aspiring culinary students who’ve posted questions that basically ask: “Why are there no female chefs in Korea?” A Yonhap feature this past summer reads, “Men Cooking Mesmerize Korean TV Watchers in a Still Male-dominated Society.” In a society where women cook a large majority of its food and their mothers inspire a large majority of chefs, it seems incredibly difficult (albeit, not impossible) to find women in head chef positions in Seoul. Is it truly that women are less capable? Or could it be the remnants of a culture that continue to put men in the lead? If fine dining is an art form, the words of art historian Linda Nochlin in her 1971 essay, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? come to mind: “But in actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class, and, above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, or our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education—education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs and signals.” Now in 2015, I wonder how much our world has changed.