Women on the Chopping Block? Gender Dynamics on Popular Kids Cooking Competition Shows and in the Culinary Profession

Table: BEHAV1
Experimentation location: Home
Regulated Research (Form 1c): No
Project continuation (Form 7): Yes

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Abstract:

Bibliography/Citations:

Albors-Garrigos, Jose et al. “Gender Discrimination in Haute Cuisine: A Systematic Literature and Media Analysis.” International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 89, 2020.

Chopped Junior.” Wikipedia, 24 Dec. 2022. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chopped_Junior&oldid=1129344177. Accessed 25 December 2022.

Jalalzai, Farida, Venkat Sethuraman, and Maya Sethuraman. “Women on the Chopping Block? Gender Dynamics on the Popular Food Network Show.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 1, 2022.

Kids Baking Championship.” Wikipedia, 27 Dec. 2022. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kids_Baking_Championship&oldid=1129768714. Accessed 25 December 2022.

“List of Chopped Episodes.” Wikipedia, 31 Oct. 2022. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Chopped_episodes&oldid=1119327887. Accessed 25 December 2022.


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Research Plan:

Rationale:

Cooking competition shows such as Chopped feature professional chefs who are the leading culinary figures in their field. Limited female representation on Chopped may be attributed to the lack of female presence in the culinary profession overall. For viewers, especially young, aspiring female chefs, the fewer number of female contestants on shows such as Chopped may shape how these young girls view their potential in the culinary profession. They may be discouraged from participating in cooking show competitions and entering the culinary profession altogether due to the existing limitation of female representation and dearth of role models in the profession. Traditionally, cooking has been considered a highly gendered act, and most cultures perceive cooking to be a female household task. Despite this gender dynamic, it has been well-established that women lag substantially behind men when it comes to their representation in the culinary profession. Further research is needed to understand the reason for this gender imbalance in the culinary field and the important role that women chefs may play in inspiring the younger generation of girls. The gender gap in the culinary profession may be better understood by exploring the gender dynamics of kid and adult cooking shows and examining representation of young female chefs and women chefs in media. 
 

Research Questions:

  1. Are young female chefs underrepresented as contestants and less likely to advance in the competition and achieve victory?
  2. Will young female chefs’ success rates be proportional to their representation as contestants
  3. Is there a relationship between young female chefs’ and older female chefs’ representation on television? 
  4. How does this potential relationship impact the gender makeup of the culinary profession? 

 

Procedure:

  1. A systematic review of all available Chopped Junior and Kids Baking Championship episodes will be conducted to categorize contestants by gender. Altogether, 203 episodes and 20 seasons will be analyzed in this study. 
  2. The data will include the number of young female chefs per episode and the gender of the winner. 
  3. The genders of the contestants will be triangulated through watching Chopped Junior and Kids Baking Championship episodes or through media articles and biographies. 
  4. The percent of young female chefs that entered the competition per season will be calculated by dividing the percent of young female chefs in each episode by the total number of episodes in the season.
  5. The percent of young female chefs that won the competition per season will be calculated by dividing the number of young female chefs who won in each season by the total number of episodes in the season.
  6. Descriptive and correlative analysis will be performed to understand the above hypothesis and purpose using R programming.

Questions and Answers

 

1. What was the major objective of your project and what was your plan to achieve it? Was that goal the result of any specific situation, experience, or problem you encountered? Were you trying to solve a problem, answer a question, or test a hypothesis?

The main objective of the current project was to further examine gendered aspects of the shows Chopped Junior and Kids Baking Championship. Specifically, the proportion of young female chefs in the initial pool of contestants and among the winners was analyzed to determine whether or not they are underrepresented in cooking competition shows and if a disproportionately lower representation of young female chefs is a reflection of larger societal patterns in the culinary profession. Chopped Junior and Kids Baking Championship episodes were examined to determine whether younger female chefs appear to have equal representation compared to younger male chefs. This analysis also allowed me to explore whether or not young female chefs’ representation correlated with that of older female chefs and provided insight into possible reasons for this pattern. To achieve my objective, a systematic review was conducted using data available online to determine the initial number of female contestants and the episode winner’s gender. 

It is known that female representation in media affects young girls’ perceptions of themselves and of their potentials; having fewer women depicted in influential positions could unintentionally discourage girls that watch the show. I wanted to further examine this idea to determine whether or not younger female chefs may be discouraged from participating in cooking competitions due to limited female representation on Chopped

The question that this project strived to answer is as follows: Are young female chefs underrepresented as contestants and less likely to advance in the competition and achieve victory? This project also expands on the goal of the Chopped project to confirm whether or not young female chefs’ success rates appear to be proportional to their representation as contestants. It addresses this goal within a broader context, as this research focuses on a different age group.

 

2. What were the major tasks you had to perform in order to complete your project? 

The major task I had to perform to complete this project was a systematic review of episodes from Chopped Junior and Kids Baking Championship to record the number of female contestants per episode. Additionally, as eliminations occurred, the number of female contestants that remained in each round and the gender of the winner of the round were recorded. The data was then analyzed using statistical descriptive measures and R programming. 

 

3. What is new or novel about your project? Is there some aspect of your project's objective, or how you achieved it that you haven't done before? Is your project's objective, or the way you implemented it, different from anything you have seen? If you believe your work to be unique in some way, what research have you done to confirm that it is?

When researching gender disparities in the culinary profession, I found numerous articles detailing the limited representation of female chefs; however, until the previous project was completed, there appeared to be no systematic research done regarding female contestants on cooking competition shows and their portrayal, or lack thereof. A cooking competition show provides an opportunity for chefs to become more visible in their fields and signal to the public they are among the top players in haute cuisine, making these shows important to explore further. The objective of this project is different from other research I have reviewed because it delves more deeply into gender inequalities by relating young female chefs’ representation on television to that of older female chefs, ultimately demonstrating how their presence influences the culinary profession. 

Though I have been interested in the topic of gender inequalities in the workplace and in society, I had not systematically investigated how young female and male chefs are represented in visual media and the relationship between their portrayals. My opinions regarding gender disparities had previously been purely observational; this project allowed me to gather empirical data that further supported my ideas. By analyzing episodes of various cooking competitions, I was able to use data analysis to more deeply understand gender inequalities. This issue is unique to the culinary profession in particular because women are often related to cooking in the domestic sphere, while men are linked to cooking in relation to their professional occupations. This project is also unique because it endeavors to describe girls’ overall representation in Chopped Junior and Kids Baking Championship. This allows me to further explore girls’ presence in the culinary field and link it to older female chefs’ presence on television and in the culinary profession.

 

4. What was the most challenging part of completing your project? What problems did you encounter, and how did you overcome them? What did you learn from overcoming these problems?

One problem I encountered while completing this project was triangulating the gender of all contestants. For most names listed, I had to either use biographies or media articles to find the gender of the contestant or watch the cooking competition episodes. I wanted to ensure that the genders of the contestants were recorded with minimal error, which is why I didn’t determine gender solely from the contestant’s name.

From working through these problems, I learned that accuracy and multiple sources of information are important in scientific research. Confirming the gender of a contestant through multiple sources was necessary because it was the basis of my data analysis.

 

5. If you were going to do this project again, are there any things you would do differently the next time?

If I were to do this project again, I would want to expand my focus to food competition shows in other countries, such as the UK and India. I would examine the gender diversity on those shows, looking for patterns across the multiple shows, as it would provide me with a deeper understanding of female chefs’ portrayal in the culinary profession and further support or refute my findings. Analyzing food competition shows in other countries would enable me to find similarities, and possibly differences, in the portrayal of female chefs. This would especially be of interest because every country has different societal expectations for women, which could possibly shape how they are depicted. 

 

6. Did working on this project give you any ideas for other projects? 

 

Working on this project allowed me to understand that young female chefs don’t have insufficient representation in cooking competition shows, unlike older female chefs. This indicates that although many girls may want to be chefs, they may not be able to gain enough prominence to do so due to the prevalent disparities that women face. While girls have a greater presence in cooking competition shows, they don’t appear to be in positions of power as they grow older. 

This prompted me to think about other fields where a similar pattern may be observed—for instance, over the years, more women have started working in large technology companies but do not hold positions at the executive level in comparison to men. In general, women may have a greater presence in the workplace, but they do not appear to be in positions of power at the executive level. Additionally, fashion and shopping are frequently associated with women, but men are linked to fashion in relation to public consumption, as most designers are men. I hope to gain an understanding of the inequalities that women face in other professions and draw connections between them.

 

7. How did COVID-19 affect the completion of your project?

COVID-19 did not affect the completion of this project because the data collected and analyzed was available online.