Are women missing out on the top Hospitality Jobs

Are women missing out on the top Hospitality Jobs!!!! The big question at the moment has been pay equality within UK industry, but like in other industries are women missing out on the top hospitality jobs?
The Change Group the UK Hospitality recruiter analysed employment data from the last five years and found that even though women make up 54% of the hospitality workforce, it is men that occupy 58% of the senior roles in the industry. Interesting figures! We at lobsterjobs have been asking our contacts why they think this is the case. The various replies are listed below:

• Career breaks to have a family
• More temporary female employment
• Men seek out the manager roles more than women
• Favouritism to men
• Chauvinism in the workplace
• Anti-social hours can put women off long term

One of the reasons put forward was that because of family commitments. It was suggested that due to the flexibility of working in the  hospitality industry, that it was an ideal industry for women to work in if they had to work around childcare etc. This may be a positive but it could also be the reason why more senior roles are not occupied by women. With this in mind should the industry be looking at ways around this to notify key strengths of women in part-time roles and look to be more flexible with full-time roles to bridge the gap?
It appears that things might be changing though. A recent article from the Morning Advertiser says that recent figures suggest that the percentage of new female chefs have recently outnumbered the percentage of new male chefs and that if this remained constant, the number of female chefs would outnumber male chefs by the year 2022. Progress indeed.

The Change Group founder and Director Dave Allen, welcomed the figures, with some trepidation. He said, "It is great to see there are more female chefs and that this figure has leapt up in the past year. This is certainly a trend that we are seeing in the people that we are placing at London's top establishments. The hospitality sector wants more female chefs and we are delighted to see so many of London's top establishments taking steps to recruit more women into their kitchens."
Meanwhile in America there has been new research that suggests women in the leisure and hospitality sector have seen the highest growth in salary out of all business sectors. Could this be due to the increased number of women in senior positions??
Could an increase in female role models in hospitality be helping attract more women into the industry. Popular TV series like the Great British Bake Off with Mary Berry bringing winners like Candice Brown (Winner of Season 7), Joanne Wheatly (Winner of Season 2), Frances Quinn (Winner of season 4), Nancy Birtwhistle (Winner of Season 5) and Nadiya Hussain (Winner of Season 6) to the populous have all helped and could be the main reason for the recent upsurge in female chefs. Either way it can not harm the issue.

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