A woman’s place is no longer just in the kitchen.
Though cooking may have traditionally been considered a woman’s domain, the food industry has long been a male-dominated one — but food delivery service GrubHub hopes to change that.
Its new initiative RestaurantHER aims to “make the restaurant industry a more equal place for women” by making it easier to find and support women-led restaurants in the US, GrubHub announced in a press release on Monday.
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In 2013, Time magazine published a list of 13, all male, “Gods of Food,” prompting cries of sexism. According to the US Department of Labor, only 20% of chefs in 2015 were female.
And that’s a big problem.
As many as 90% of women who work in the restaurant industry have reportedly experienced sexual harassment on the job, and that contributes to an environment that may discourage women from pursuing work in the field.
“One reason we’re launching RestaurantHER is because there is a huge missed opportunity in the restaurant industry by not having more gender balanced kitchens,” said GrubHub’s CEO, Matt Maloney, told Chicago Inno.
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As part of the initiative, the company has announced that it will donate up to $1 million to support female leadership in the food industry based on diners’ pledges to eat at or order from women-led restaurants throughout March. And to make it easy for hungry people to find women-led restaurants, GrubHub has also launched an interactive map showing hundreds of women-run and women-owned restaurants across the US.
“Closing the gender gap that leaves women occupying fewer than 20 percent of chef positions in the U.S. will ultimately introduce new creativity and expertise into our restaurants and no doubt elevate the entire culinary industry,” Maloney said in a press statement. “We believe Grubhub has a duty to support women-run restaurants and promote more diversity, in the industry and on our platform, which will begin with RestaurantHER.”
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