Reasons Why Women Employees Cannot Be Employed in Hotel Kitchens

Abstract

When assessed in terms of gender roles, cooking and the other tasks related to kitchen are regarded as the duty of women. It is seen that these duties attributed to women by the society are mostly performed by women in private areas. However, it is observed that when cooking and other Works which are related to the kitchen in public areas, are usually performed by men. From the researches in the literature the purpose of this, designed in an exploratory style, is to investigate the reasons why the women are/aren’t employed in Professional kitchens in the hotels. As a result of the analysis of qualitative data gathered by semistructured interview technique in April-May 2017 from 60 cooks working in the five-star resort and the city hotels in the Mediterranean region, women's employment is usually not preferred in the professional kitchens in the hotels. Reasons why women are not employed in professional kitchens in the hotels are grouped under women not fit for work in professional kitchens, inadequate professional kitchen experience of women, gender roles-related work and day-off problems, male dominant environment in professional kitchens, women's character/personality/emotional and etc. features, women's gender roles, career barriers that women face before they are hired, physical characteristics of women, absence of career goals related to professional kitchens heading. Findings have been discussed with the results of studies done by different researchers on key concepts covering the thesis topic in the current literature. Today, there are many studies that examine the general employment problems women face in the work life. However, existence of the limited/indirect studies of the specific employment problems faced by female cooks in work life point to the original value and the theoretical contribution of the thesis. Notifying the inadequacy of women employment in Professional kitchens in the hotels to senior managers, human resources managers and chefs in the hotels and underlining the basic problems expressed by the chefs are in fact over table will be beneficial in reaching the desired equality (in work life in general and in the professional kitchens in particular) of men and women. In the future; to contribute to the literature, investigation of why fewer women are employed in city hotels than at resort hotels is suggested.