Chef, author and food personality Poppy O’Toole - known as Poppy Cooks on Instagram - asked her followers to share their experiences of being a woman working in hospitality for International Women’s Day 2023. The resulting stories were shocking, detailing a litany of misogyny, abuse and sexual assault.
‘The sad truth is that these shared experiences are relatable to me personally and will be to so many,’ Poppy said in her Instagram post. ‘This platform has allowed me to feel safe in being loud about my own experiences, having spoken before about experiencing unwarranted advancements, treated differently to male counterparts, talked about explicitly in front of silent colleagues, listening to derogatory views on women as chefs, receiving explicit texts from a married, much older employer asking for sex and multiple counts of physical sexual harassment all from the age of 17 onwards working in pubs and restaurants.’
You can read a selection of stories as well as countless other comments on her Instagram post below, but among the stories are some like the following:
‘My first role in a kitchen, the manager only hired me under the pretence of making unwanted sexual advances. When it came to disciplinary proceedings, he brought his kids in with him. Trying to make himself out to be a put upon family man. He got moved to a different site, I quit.’
‘I was fired because I wouldn’t go on a date with the chef (I was waitressing).’
‘I own a restaurant and have lost count of how many men have scoffed at me when they’ve asked who owns it, have said women shouldn’t own restaurants, have asked to speak to the owner and then asked for the actual owner.’
Want to read more about the female chefs pushing the envelope in the UK? Check out our round-up of the best female chefs across the UK that you need to know about!