Try asking a foodie to name three famous female chefs and I doubt you’ll get any answers. Women are the traditional family nourishers and recipe-hoarders, yet they don’t dominate the professional culinary world in the least. I spoke to Beijing’s top female chefs and restaurant pros to find out what’s behind the dearth of women in the professional kitchen.

Sirirat Saibun at the new Solana Thai spot, Lantung, is one of Beijing’s newest chefs. Originally from Chiangmai, Saibun learned to cook by helping her mother prepare meals. “I think all women have a chef’s skill in their blood. In Thailand, many professional chefs are women because men don’t seem to like the kitchen much. It seems different in Beijing,” she says.

Sonia Jia, the pastry wizard at the InterContinental Beichen, was lucky to learn her craft from master chefs who valued skill over gender. “Besides culinary knowledge, the first thing I learned from Austrian pastry chef Frank Schmit was that there are no boys or girls in the kitchen, just cooks,” she recalls.

Clearly, the difficulties women face in the culinary world are the irregular hours and physical demands. Sonia admits that “after acting as wife and mother, it is more difficult to balance the role as a chef.”

This trend isn’t just limited to international establishments in Beijing. Local Chinese restaurants are also dominated by male chefs. “Chinese think cooking is difficult for women because the woks are really heavy, and the fires in the professional kitchen are much bigger,” says Jen Lin-Liu, author of Serve the People and proprietor of the Black Sesame kitchen. “I think it’s one of those fields where there’s a perception that it’s not suitable for women.”

The best female owner-chef team in Beijing is probably Gaby Alves and Ana Esteves of SALT. Esteves says, “I think cooking professionally isn’t about being a guy or a girl, it’s about personality.” Adding to that, Gaby says, “I think everyone who is hardworking can succeed, male or female.”

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Emma Starks