Women Organizing Against Harassment

Sexual Harassment in the Industry

Taking the Heat

This week I wanted to shed light on a non-profit organization on the Rutgers Campus, Women Organizing Against Harassment (WOAH). Being that sexual harassment for women working in kitchens is something we have all dealt with sometime or another I thought it would be prevalent to share some information about an organization working hard to empower women. WOAH’s mission is to stop violence and sexual assault on women and offer support to survivors of abuse. Links to their Facebook, tumblr, and twitter pages are available from the WOAH homepage. They have weekly meetings and organize events to reach the community with the hopes of bringing awareness about rape, the culture surrounding it, and enthusiastic consent. Their goal is to provide a community for women where they can be loved, understood, and built up. After 20 years in the culinary field I can speak from experience when I say, you better have tough skin. It shouldn’t be like that, but it is. Groups like WOAH give women the tools (and the friends) they need to get through difficult situations that can arise from living on campuses, working in the culinary field, or dealing with harassment on any level.

The other links I provided are to share with women in the industry or those who want to enter the industry- there will be struggles, but you can get through them. Deborah Harris in “Taking the Heat” highlights the struggles of women working as chefs in professional kitchens, from the gender hierarchy which forces them to continually prove their worth to the sexual harassment that goes along with the territory. There is a part in this podcast where Harris describes a woman chef telling another woman in the kitchen who is crying at work that her actions set the chef back 5 years. Front of house (FOH) female staff are allowed to have emotions but back of house (BOH) female staff have to be strong, able to take whatever is thrown their way and never show weakness. I’m going to take the time in a later post to interview a woman who has worked in restaurants to highlight some of the issues that Harris mentions encountering during her social study. Women Organizing Against Harassment is an organization whose mission addresses the culture of places where sexual harassment thrives, which is why the topic of female chefs resonates with WOAH’s target audience. Women often struggle with being marginalized in their place of employment and it is time to unite, to combat these practices and make a change for the future. The more these topics are brought up, the more women will be empowered by knowing they are not alone and they do have ways to fight against it.