Why were executive chef and other restaurant kitchen positions considered a man’s job when women were expected to be the household cooks?
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It’s not the cooking part that was “a woman’s job” societally, it was taking care of the household as a whole – the cooking, homemaking, raising kids, all of that stuff. The man’s “role” was to work a job – and whether that job was janitor or cook, that would have still been expected of men, since it was a career outside of the home.
Even today, when we’ve moved past those expectations, restaurant kitchens are still largely male dominated – women make up something like 20% of professional cooks (though they’re a larger share of front-of-house – servers, bartenders, hosting, etc.), and when you get into fine dining, it’s an even smaller proportion. There are lots of theories about the reasons behind that, but the point is, restaurant cooking continues to be dominated by men.
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