International Women's Day: Just 17% of female hospitality professionals are chefs with significant challenges still remaining unsolved

Despite female workers accounting for 48% of the UK’s hospitality industry less than 20% of workers are chefs, with senior figures arguing more needs to be done to encourage women into these roles.

Amanda Nicholson-Hirst, Operations Director at Lifetime Training, spoke to The Staff Canteen about what government and organisations are doing to improve these numbers.

Highlighting why a lot of women are put off from careers within the kitchen, Amanda said: "A lot of this is down historic stigmas I think about working in kitchens and environments that actually are not applicable to women, or they feel as though that it's not a place for a woman to be in."

Amanda began her career within hospitality at the age of 14, working as a waitress in a local hotel in the North East of England.

She continued to work within hospitality where she undertook a degree in hotel business management at university, before working in hospitality recruitment, and later education as a hospitality lecturer at Leeds City College’s Thomas Danby campus.

Amid a change in attitudes within the industry, significant problems still exist, with Amanda highlighting that there needs to be more of an effort from industry leaders to change the perception of kitchens and male dominated spaces.

A great picture from @HiltonHotels Chef Academy's Masterclass last week. Apprentices learnt how to create a range of delicious fish & meat dishes.‍

Hilton's Chef Academy is one of the fantastic ways that Hilton invest in their chefs, and nurture their inhouse talent. pic.twitter.com/8KaWEi8E7z

— Lifetime Training (@Lifetime_UK) March 3, 2023

"From my perspective there's a lot changing however not quick enough. I think a lot of female leaders in industry they're not promoted into the C level roles or the director role necessarily because of historic stigmas of predominantly male environment. So, whilst I think the industry is changing, I just don't think it's changing at the pace it needs to," she said.

As an experienced hospitality operator Amanda’s role as Operations Director at Lifetime Training has made a significant impact in encouraging more women into male dominated roles.

Working with Marstons, Amanda has successfully set up a women in leadership apprenticeship that promotes women, that supports and develops female professionals into leadership positions. Lifetime Training also runs a chef academy where female representation is already double that of the national average.

"We're promoting and encouraging people to come and retrain but also, I think what they're doing is when they're coming into the industry, they’re also seeing the changes such as lifestyle changes, better shifts, things that actually work around either working mums or people that have come back from maternity leave and having seen the environments that they're working in," explained Amanda.

She added: "We are working alongside partners to continue that change, we are seeing the numbers increase, but actually it's still very underrepresented from a female perspective."

In an effort to create a more equal workplace Amanda wants to see the introduction of more flexible working practices that would encourage women to consider a career in the kitchen.

Commenting on flexible working Amanda said: "Encouraging flexible working coming back from things like maternity leave or women that have got young children and how working flexible shifts can work."

She added: "I think actually seeing the benefits and support that the hospitality businesses are now offering women, especially young women with young children, but also older women that actually might want to retrain in these environments or come back in after some time away, to be able to support them to come back into the workplace."

Looking to the future if hospitality wants to become more equal operators needs to do more to remove stigmas and continue building on recent change.

"I think the main element is how we can encourage more people and create the career of choice of the industry, and I think that's the bit that's still a bit of a stigma around hospitality is it's not seen as a career of choice for women, and it's not seen as a career choice to go into the shape environment. How do we continue to promote that through education of young children coming through into school and obviously from the female representation there, but also people retraining and rescaling as well," explained Amanda.