Why is it that women are the predominant cooks at home, but men are the predominant cooks professionally?

This isn’t so in my family. For some reason my brothers all are the best cooks and their wives can’t or don’t like to cook. I also don’t like to cook.

My answer for the family duties is tradition, in early America, the men went out and made a living by working, while the women remained at home, and that is the tradition that is followed today in many families. I have seen a trend for the grandmother or the Father to do the cooking, depending on the family dynamics.

As far as the chef portion of your question, I submit you are not using actual statistics in your question.

I Submit you are wrong!
And wrong again
@YARNLADY

I agree with @YARNLADY traditionally women cook in the home. Men worked outside of the home, so chefs were men. The men who are chefs, probably did most of the cooking at home too.

Now that women are in the workplace more, they are chefs too. And, men are picking up the slack more with domestic chores amd might cook more often at home.

Probably women are still more likely to not work, or work part time, so the cooking falls on them more often.

I know a lot of men who do the cooking at home though. Funny, my ex, his dad never cooked, but all the sons cooked at least some of the time if not the majority of the time at home. They were a macho bunch of guys, disrespectful of women in many ways, all had mistresses, and other macho bullshit, but all were willing to do household chores. My ex, we were in high school, used to vacuum the house all the time, and cook, always kept his room clean, watched his neices when they visited, changed their diapers. His mom loved that he did all that stuff.

@Ponderer983 Thank you I stand corrected

Because sexism is rather deeply ingrained in our culture, and we think that men are always better for the job, even when it’s a “woman’s” job.

It’s not a statistic, but I know a number of women who “don’t cook.” This is new since my generation, where women were expected to do the cooking. With both partners working, I think more men are pitching in and cooking. I find it my favorite “chore” and have never minded doing it. However, I made sure my son learned to cook as well as my daughter, and he likes it too. Who does the cooking is more of a choice now than an assumption.

I think it’s an outdated sexism attitude still hung-over from decades past when only men worked and women stayed at home to look after the house. This meant that the men would not have time to cook at home as well, even if they were professional chefs, so women would do it. Nowadays of course, women are as likely to work outside the home as men are, but the sexism still prevails.

For the record, my husband is an excellent cook and he does most of the cooking in our household. His dad is the same. My dad doesn’t have a clue and wouldn’t know where to start, unless it’s on a barbecue.

Your question is flawed: I don’t know any households where the woman is the predominant cook at home.

Do you have any data to support this claim?

All the men in my family cook, right along side the women. I don’t know why the male chefs get more attention. Glass ceiling crap?

Restaurant kitchen culture is a strange world. It grew out of a European model in which the kitchen staff was organized along overtly military lines. This was seen as the best way to coordinate all of the incredibly complex operations that have to come together to get elaborate dishes to the diners on time.

In France, kitchens are staffed mostly by young guys fresh out of the army. It’s perfectly natural for them to step out of the army and into the quasi-military world of the kitchen. The vernacular used in the French kitchen is quite militaristic. The atmosphere is thick with testosterone. The fact that this all revolves around food is somewhat incidental. Guys who are really into restaurant work tend to be ones who thrive on this highly-charged battleground atmosphere.

This European model shaped the way Americans see professional cooking. Imported European chefs got the American culinary scene going, so they imported their management styles as well. Most of today’s “star” American chefs model themselves, consciously or unconsciously, on that macho European paradigm. Things are slowly changing, partly because we don’t draw our kitchen staffs out of the military, nor are we importing chefs anymore.

The rise of culinary schools in the US is changing things, too. It used to be that you learned to cook by apprenticeship, which, in practice, meant that you were thrown into this extremely macho kitchen and were berated military-style into submission. Most women didn’t want to put up with that shit. Now, the typical avenue into the profession is through a few years in culinary school. They still tend to have something of a military flavor to them, but hey, the student is paying the school, so it’s not in the school’s interest to disaffect the student. This is changing kitchen culture as these people eventually take the reins in the kitchen.

Related. This also has some interesting statistics.

Men have been taught to be more demanding and aggressive when it comes to furthering their careers and working their way up the ladder. More women just ‘put up’ with being cooks than men I think.