[Sca-cooks] RE: Male vs. female cooks

[vongraph]

>
> >  The ability to be a good chef rests not on what you
> >were born with as sexual organs but what you have in your heart and skill
in
> >your hands and knowledge you have aquired and practiced as well as your
> >commitment to the craft.
>
>Snipped for brevity>> seem to have a generally easier time with the
> lifting of the 80-quart stock-pots and such. Again, this is similar
> to the situation faced by potential female firefighters: take the
> next ten men you meet on the street, and the next ten women, and have
> them sling somebody over their shoulder and carry them down a couple
> of flights of stairs.
>

The eighty pound stock pot is not really that much of an issue except in the
train phase maybe and then it would be just something put forth as an
obsticle.  No one in their right mind or who wants to survive many years as
a chef lifts 80 pound pots off or onto a stove etc without help. In fact in
any decent kitchen the act of doing so could get you fired in a heartbeat,
workmans comp is so much more expensive than weekly salary and I do not know
of many establishments who want you to risk injury do such things. Add to
that the fact the pot may be extremely hot and you have a very dangerous
situation. Its easier to get help. Inthe fire fighter situation I agree
there is difference.


> Actually, what seems most common in large cities is that women are
> frequently relegated to the pastry department, and they're probably
> pushed in that direction for some weird social reason, and whether
> that's any more right than being driven to the unemployment insurance
> lines I couldn't say, but it seems to be how things are.

<<Now there I tend to disagree, I have noticed that most pastry chefs are
men? Maybe this is more trend in Europe than here?
>

>
> Hmmm. I regret to say I don't actually know _any_ great female chefs,
> and precious few great male ones. I know very many wonderful cooks of
> both genders, though. But then a cook and a chef aren't the same
> thing.
>

Maybe I should say that I know as many great female cooks as male cooks,,
and yes there is difference between a chef and a cook and the difference is
in they look at themselves more than how they are perceived by others.  I
perfer to consider myself a chef versus a cook. what I do is cross between
art and skill, learning and practice.

YIS, Elric