Gail Aggen writes:

I was fascinated by the commenter Jake Jacobsen who relayed his experiences working in professional kitchens. From the way he described it, these kitchens are no place for the faint of heart or delicate of constitution. I had not put that together in my mind when wondering why there were so few women chefs. But now that I think back on my own experiences waitressing as a young woman, I cannot remember any kitchen staff being female, including those who wash dishes. Now since my experience dates back to the dim recesses of history, I thought I would survey a young man of my acquaintance who has worked as a cook in several restaurants, and is currently employed in a seafood restaurant. He agrees that most all kitchen staff is male, and when I asked him why, he too mentioned the heavy lifting of produce, garbage, and the like, and added that professional kitchens are very fast-paced, high-stress places that do not seem to suit women very well.

I am writing about this to you because this morning I read about Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Chief, having broken her foot playing tennis recently. Last summer, Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor broke her ankle in an airport, and Hillary Clinton shattered her elbow on her way to a meeting at the White House. Statistics show that on-the-job stress contributes to accidents, and I do not doubt that these women find themselves being extraordinarily stressed in their jobs. The president and other cabinet leaders, however, as well as other men who are in high-stakes, high-stress jobs, do not seem to have parts and pieces of themselves broken nearly as much, if at all. It is also true that women who get sick from what we would loosely term “vice-derived” illnesses, such as lung cancer, HIV, and alcohol-related organ damage, get a lot sicker a lot faster than men do from engaging in unhealthy behavior. So just on a very basic, physiological level, nature shows us that men and women are different, and suited to different roles. They handle physical, and I believe psychological and emotional stress differently, as well.

We now run our military as a grand social experiment, putting gals everywhere that guys go, and in terms of the military’s two functions, which are to kill people and break things, I think we are really handicapping our military by making everything coed. Aside from the sexual tension, and men’s instinctive desire to protect women, there are even more basic problems. We know a young man in the Special Forces who worries about the pressure his command is under to include women. These guys spend days and weeks out in the Afghan mountains and wilderness, facing terrific physical challenges as they engage a mortal enemy. To be blunt, women impair the mission because of the challenges of their menses and hygiene issues. Their odor is intense and far-reaching, and their physical strength and endurance falter compared to the men. These are basic issues of life that all the women’s studies and Feminist rhetoric cannot change.

My opinion is that women nowadays feel driven to dominate all aspects of society, but it is antithetical to their nature, and to be truthful, it makes them crazy! They get a hard look about them, and either become susceptible to delusional thinking or get a real life-sucking nastiness to their personalities. Basically, a perversion, a deformity of manliness. Women seem to work best when not under pressure or deadlines and when they are given latitude to run their own show, as they do when they are running a home. For instance, I might say, “Well, I would like to get that little garden patch turned over in the next couple of days, use up some of the stuff in the outside freezer, write to Laura Wood, start my spring cleaning, and visit Thelma in the nursing home.” So I put in a load of laundry, start looking over recipes, and begin to brush down the ceilings. Lo and behold, here comes my neighbor to the door, worried about her upcoming biopsy. So I drop everything and put on the kettle. Why? Because she needs me more than my tasks or my schedule does, and praise God, I have time for her because I know it is up to me to rearrange my schedule and heck, my goals are my own anyways. And it really ministers to me to operate this way.

This would not do for my husband, who, if he is outside working on a car, does not want to be told to come in and have a coffee break. He’ll get to his coffee when he completes this task that he is determined to conquer and to finish. When he was still working, I knew better than to just randomly call him at work and start chit-chatting. That was his world, and I stayed out of it, in order to help him to focus on his job, and not be worried or distracted by outside concerns. He was able to be the best he could be there. There were women who would call their husbands with little problems or grievances and it really impaired the husbands’ ability to succeed at work. Just ask any soldier who gets a distressing letter while he is out on deployment.

Men tend to run aground physically and emotionally when they do not have specific goals, deadlines and routines. Men like to be thrown a challenge and just hammer on that thing until they have conquered it. Thank God. Don’t women know that they only have one go-around in this life? And that when you miss your children’s little milestones and antics, you’ve missed them forever? Or that it takes quantity time to make a home a home, and a life worth living? That traditions are worth the time and effort it takes to make them, maintain them and pass them on?

I am really thankful to you, Laura, and the other talented and concerned writers who carry the standard for common sense and decency. You will make a difference.

Laura writes:

Thank you.

I completely agree with your observations. I knew a very high-placed woman executive who actually fed her employees milk and cookies. This misplaced maternal affection and the delusional effort to make the workplace a family leads to breakdown and stress. And, women are more fragile.

A woman has to change something fundamental about herself to put aside the interruptions you mention and to disregard the people at her door. She can change but it will always hound her.  This to me explains so much of the psychic instability of feminists such as Simone d Beauvoir and many ordinary women today. They seem to be in a perpetual war with their own inclinations and with the effort to create intimacy in work settings.

Getting back to the issue of women chefs, I have noticed that magazines and newspapers adore them. But I imagine, as Jake mentioned, there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Lisa writes:

Here is a relevant comment from Beside the Fire, with a quote from Queen Victoria:

“I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights’, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to ‘unsex’ themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.” – Queen Victoria

Can anyone contradict her? Are not contemporary women as a class the “most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings?”

Karen I. writes:

Autoimmune disease is a prime example of a stress-related health issue that affects women far more than men. I have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and have symptoms of others, which I have been told I am likely be diagnosed with in the future. Most doctors and researchers think stress is a contributing factor, if not a cause, of autoimmune disease. I see some very well-regarded doctors at a cancer care center for my condition and they all agree that stress some role in the onset and worsening of autoimmune diseases. I know that in my case, I start to feel very tired and have other symptoms when I am stressed, and my blood counts start to show a worsening of my condition. The stress can be external or from things like a cold. 

According to the website of the American Autoimmune Related Disorders Association, Inc., there are more than 100 autoimmune diseases that cause serious, chronic health problems and, “of the 30 million of the 50 million Americans with autoimmune disease, 30 million are women. Autoimmunity is the fourth leading cause of disability in women.” In some autoimmune diseases, the ratio of women to men sufferers is astounding. For example, nine out of ten of those diagnosed with lupus are women. Ten out of eleven diagnosed with Hashimotos are women, and eight out of nine with autoimmune hepatitis are women. Some autoimmune diseases are easier to live with and treat than others. They can be unpredictable, hard to diagnose, and present with varying symptoms and severity. 

I truly believe I am adding quality years to my life and possibly avoiding very serious additional medical issues by not taking on a job outside my home. I honestly think that if women knew what they were doing to their health when they place themselves in positions of constant stress, they would reconsider. Once you have an incurable condition, you tend to look at life very differently, and priorities become very clear, very quickly.

Jim B. writes:

There was a perfect example of this on this past season’s Top Chef (one of the few “Reality” shows I think is worth watching, mostly because it’s about highly trained professionals doing what they do best).

Early on, four of the chefs really stood out as head and shoulders above everyone else.  As it happened, one was a women, who showed early on that she was just as talented as the best of the men, and showed much more mental toughness than the usual female chef you see
on this show (no crying, no whining – just a pro doing her job).

If you’ve never watched it: Top Chef puts all the contestants in a house together and gives them, over a period of about three weeks, one crazy cooking contest after another: they might wake up, be transported to a airplane hanger, and told to cook a gourmet meal for 200 Air force personnel using nothing but the supplies left over from yesterday’s mess hall.  And if they mess up, they might be sent home that day.  The men, especially the ones who ended up on top, thrived on the pressure (two of the top finishers were brothers who each run their own restaurants and who seem to have spent their entire lives
trying to beat each other, whether at snowball fights or cooking). They seemed to gain energy as the competition wore on.

In contrast, the female chef – who had started out a peer of the best of the men – started to crumble halfway through.  She seemed to just give up, and to almost want to be sent home.  She just barely made it through to the final, but I think that had more to do with her early success impressing the judges than anything else, and she was the first of the final four to be sent home from the final.  All I could think was: “She’s an amazing cook: what is she doing wasting that talent in a professional kitchen?”

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