Succeeding as a chef requires commitment and sacrifice.
Woman chefs are more prevalent now than in recent years, but there's still a glass ceiling. The Austin Chronicle reports that nearly half of culinary-industry employees are women, yet only 10 percent hold top jobs. Whether the gap is primarily due to discrimination against women or to the fact that women's career choices lead them on alternate paths isn't clear. It would seem, then, that a woman interested in achieving a high level of success as a chef needs to prepare to overcome barriers created by discriminatory attitudes toward woman chefs and by her own need to balance her professional and personal lives, even while she takes the career steps required of anyone, regardless of gender, intent on reaching the top of this profession.
Instructions
1. Lay a solid foundation for the future by attending and graduating from a postsecondary culinary education program. Consider pursuing a bachelor's degree in culinary arts or a related field like hotel and restaurant management. Head chefs are as much business professionals as they are culinary ones.
2. Learn about foreign cultures and how they influence cuisines. Travel, if you can. Read books, seek out online forums and explore local opportunities to get to know people from other countries and learn about how they live and eat.
3. Apprentice while you're in school and after you graduate, if necessary. Seek out the guidance of a mentor who'll help you develop your skills and talents over the long term.
4. Start at the bottom and work your way up -- in more than one restaurant, if necessary -- when you're ready for your first paid job after graduating. Prove yourself at each level and learn all you can before seeking a higher position.
5. Put your career first by making the necessary compromises in your personal life. Eliminate the self-imposed limits on your time and energy that industry experts say hold many women back. The highest level of success as a chef is achieved by working in restaurant kitchens; however, working in restaurant kitchens requires a great deal of personal sacrifice.
6. Go in with a positive attitude. Encourage fair treatment and success by expecting fair treatment and success and behaving in a way that fosters it. Establish cordial relationships with your coworkers based on mutual respect.
7. Redefine "success" if you find that the compromises required to become a top restaurant chef are too demanding. A successful career is one that challenges, inspires and gives your life purpose. If traditional ideas of success don't do that for you, find it on your own terms.
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