The Treatment of Women in the Restaurant Industry
According to the BU School of Hospitality Administration, men outnumber women in positions of power in the restaurant industry, making it a more intimidating space to speak up about harassment. In fact, MSU Broad College of Business stated men are 10 times more likely to be promoted to principal/partner or president levels within the hospitality industry.
In 2018, The Harvard Business Review conducted a study on sexual harassment specifically in restaurants. They realized cases in Hollywood, politics, and academia were getting press, but the lower-paying jobs lacked attention.
With significantly more men in management roles in this industry, Harvard Business Review saw the difference in power allowed sexual harassment to be “tolerated, ignored, or normalized.”
“The typical frontline restaurant employee is young, female, and working for a male manager: 71% of restaurant servers nationwide are female.”-Harvard Business Review
A female waitress in her 20s, who will be left anonymous and go by ‘Jane,’ felt comfortable enough to tell me about her personal experience working in the industry. Jane is a sophomore at the University of Utah who has been working at the same restaurant for two years.
This past summer, she noticed the head chef specifically targeted the younger female servers at work. The chef made inappropriate comments directly to them or about them to other male coworkers.
After the comments began to circulate back to Jane, she immediately reported the incidents to HR and the head chef admitted to everything.
HR decided to give the head chef one week of probation and held a meeting with the entire staff. There were 4 managers, and only one was female. The managers explained how it was the girls’ fault for ‘gossiping’ about the chef’s comments. They then threatened to fire anyone who comes with these types of ‘complaints’ and ‘gossip’ again. According to Jane, the female staff felt unsafe and misheard after the meeting.
Jane found out soon after that her managers did not want her to come back after the summer, but she never got an official notice until right before that she would be unemployed.
The head chef was eventually fired. However, he began to message his coworkers to quit and blame Jane for everything, so he could come back to work.
Jane ended up contacting a lawyer, but when witnesses began to speak up, word got back to management, and they immediately extended an offer to rehire her. Jane accepted the offer as she wants to continue her degree, and this is the best monetary opportunity for her. However, since coming back to work, she has not received the respect she wanted in the workplace.
