Culinary arts:

On March 8, the official Twitter of Burger King tweeted: “Women belong in the kitchen.” Aimed to be clickbait, the tweet received immense backlash from the Internet, drowning out Burger King’s follow up tweet. It reads: “If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women.” Regardless of Burger King’s controversial course of action, the disparity between the number of male and females in the professional culinary world is incredibly disturbing. 

Female chefs had been fighting their battles for quite some time, even when the issue was not exposed to the spotlight. There are many female chefs who fought to have a voice and a place in a profession too often dominated by men: the Queen of Creole Cuisine Leah Chase whose restaurant in New Orleans hosted gatherings for Civil Rights Movement activists; Filipino-American legend Cristeta Comerford who currently holds the position as the first female White House executive chef of Asian descent; legendary Julia Child who was the first woman to have a cooking show and who turned traditional home-cooking on its head into the spotlight. Unfortunately, they still face that same disparity. Like their predecessors, women chefs today are proving everyday that they can, and will, excel in the culinary field. On the forefront is Clare Smyth. Formerly a head chef at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Smyth stepped out of the shadow of the notorious Scottish chef in 2017 and opened her own French cooking-style restaurant Core, which received its own three Michelin stars in just under three years. 

But the rating system invented by the French tire company of the same name does not apply only to restaurants of French cuisine, though critics have debated that there is bias in favor of the cooking style. A few hours train ride away from Paris lies the legendary restaurant Arzak in San Sebastian, Spain, where Elena Arzak works alongside her father as the head chef making and experimenting with modernized Basque cuisine. Traveling east we arrived at Slovenia, where Ana Roš earned the first ever Michelin star for her home country, practicing gastronomy and using only local produce in her restaurant Hiša Franko. 

Stepping out of Europe, we see women carving out a place for themselves and the cuisine of their culture as well. In Bangkok, Thailand, the first Indian woman chef to earn a Michelin star, Garima Arora, is combining traditional Indian cooking techniques and local Thai produce to create an eclectic menu for her restaurant Gaa. And across the Atlantic in Santiago, Chile, Carolina Bazan is fusing her education in European cuisines and her Chilean roots to create a New Chilean Cuisine in her restaurants Ambrosía and Ambrosía Bistro, co-running the definitive culinary destination with her partner, Rosario Onetto. 

Besides the gender disparity in the food industry, there also exists a bias in favor of mostly Western European cuisines. As a result, many others are underrepresented. Therefore, many women chefs fight multiple battles, putting forward the cuisines of their culture in an eurocentric field while also announcing to the world that their potential is as immense as those of male chefs’.

Film: 

Ever since the 19th century when film was created, filmmaking has been utilized practically as a method of recording history as well as a medium of expressing emotion through art. 

Filmmaking has certainly evolved evidently in terms of technology. The evolution of the community and industry of filmmaking, however, has struggled over the years. Throughout history, film has been a male-dominated industry, where the leadership position as director of the film was not seen suitable for women. The lack of females in filmmaking in the past created a stigma of film being meant solely for men, preventing other women from having role models for inspiration or spark of passion. Still, here have been notable individuals who through these centuries have pushed through and became female pioneers of film.

Alice Guy-Laché was essentially the first female director releasing “La Fée aux Choux” in 1896, just as the film industry was gaining popularity. Alice Guy went on to make over one thousand films, yet she was never truly recognized for the full scope of her life’s work. Her name and story were often stolen by men who worked in film, claiming Alice’s films as their own. As a result, the astounding female director was not given credit for her work for years to come. Today, she is officially recognized as the first female director, and a true pioneer.

Hollywood, America’s largest film entity, is notorious for being male-dominated. Scarce in the beginning of Hollywood, the number of female directors increased throughout the 2000s. Notable filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow is an influential figure of the film industry, becoming the first woman to win an Academy Award for directing. “The Loveless,” released in 1981, was the debut of Bigelow’s work and was co-directed with Monty Montgomery. Continuing past this film, the director created countless films in varying genres, from dramas to horror and even action, giving herself an impressive and wide range. Still active nowadays, Kathryn Bigelow is a name to remember.

After directing “The Rider” from 2015, Chloé Zhao has taken on many more directing positions. “Nomadland,” Zhao’s 2020 film that recently won a Golden Globe for Best Director, is a calm yet unique film on nomads in the modern time. Zhao’s precise execution of the film was enjoyed by many. With such a successful beginning, Chloe Zhao is a director who will undoubtedly be appearing with many new film titles. 

Greta Gerwig is also another female filmmaker and has directed numerous prominent films in the past decade. Some of her well-known films include “Ladybird,” “20th Century Women,” “Frances Ha,” “Little Women,” and “Isle of Dogs.” Her distinctive work has already made a significant impact on the next generation, inspiring women to pursue a career in the film industry. Greta Gerwig is not specifically considered new and upcoming, but has certainly made her mark in the world of film. 

Dance: 

Dancing has often been viewed in correlation with femininity, but means more than what seems like the effortless flow of movement. Both male and female dancers are incredibly strong as this art requires the physical and mental compensation of a sport. Dancing was labeled the most physically demanding job by the U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration last year. 

The history of women in dance is broad; there have been many remarkable individuals who paved the way. Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham were two dancers as well as choreographers that influenced the art to the extent that they created their own technique. Marth Graham, born in 1894, completely changed how America viewed dance and inspired hundreds of souls. She created ballets with her evolving personal dance technique which is now taught as the Graham technique. During this same era of dance evolvement, Katherine Dunham was a student in anthropology when she was learning the importance of dance in culture, which pushed her to pursue her ideas. Dunham tied in cultural African and Caribbean dances with traditional ballet which she was able to bring in a new way of movement into this artform. She was the creator of the Dunham technique, thoroughly individual to Katherine Dunham.

Kathryn Morgan is a 31-year-old ballet dancer whose career as a soloist in the prestigious New York City Ballet was cut short due to her autoimmune disease. Recently, she has undergone a major career change by leaving her previous ballet company, Miami City Ballet. Morgan has created a community through her YouTube channel, full of various dancers that look up to her. She uploaded a 30-minute long video discussing her experience and treatment in the company, exposing Miami City Ballet for body shaming, a harsh reality of the dance industry. Kathryn Morgan described how this took a toll on her mental health, and her video emphasized how self-care should always come first. The dancer has also spoken up about body image issues relating to the ballet industry on The Today Show, continuing her mental health advocacy in the strict world of ballet. After spending years on the stage, she has taken to instructing, where she teaches both dance and life lessons. The dance community is always changing, with young, new dancers consistently on the rise from all over the world. 

Fiction:

Women have come a long way in the field of writing from having to publish anonymously, like Jane Austen, or under a male pen name, such as George Eliot. To trace back the female writer pioneers, we have to go all the way back to the ancient Mesopotamia, to sing the hymns and texts of Sumerian priestess Enhedunna, then travel to Japan at the Heian period to read Murasaki Shikibu’s “The Tale of Genji.” We might then turn to “Le Livre de la cité des dames” (The Book of the City of Ladies), in which a mythical city for women is created by the medieval French-Italian writer Christine de Pizan. This is among the first novels which advocates for women’s rights and education, followed by the distinct commentary that is “A Vindication on the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft. 

From then on, women began to express themselves through ink. Riding the first wave of feminism were English writers including Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Benger, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld. But changes were not only happening in western Europe: In Trinidad, Emile Maresse-Paul was writing about racial prejudices in the British West Indies; in Cuba, Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda was speaking out against slavery; in Poland, Eliza Orzeszkowa was telling stories amid the Positivism movement in her occupied country.

Then came the 20th century, when the gap between male and female authors started to close. Women began to tackle genres that were previously dominated by men, as Octavia E. Butler rose to success in the science fiction field and Agatha Christie earned her title of the Queen of Crime. From racial discrimination to the immigrant experience, to environmental justice, diversity grew among the authors as well as the topics they covered. 

Although female writers today are free to write whatever their hearts desire and books by female authors are bought as much as those by male authors in the United States, there is still progress to be made. There is still gender bias in the publishing industry, literary journals and their reviews, and there is grave imbalance in literary awards and prizes as they largely skew male. During Women’s History Month, writers and readers alike ought to look at the progress they have made and prepare to continue fighting the battle for equality.