Sally Abé: “We should be empowering women in hospitality every single day of the year”

You're making some changes to the format of the event this year. Why?

At the International Women’s Day event we held at Conrad London St James last year we had several panel discussions followed by a questions and answers sessions. I felt the interaction we got from the latter was the best bit. We could have gone on for hour and hours. This year, I wanted to build on that and put more of a focus on how we will bring about change in the hospitality industry as opposed to just discussing the challenges.

Who do you have speaking?

It’s a long list.​​ We have around 15 people speaking in total split over four sessions. Each session is repeated once, meaning that each attendee will end up watching two of the four sessions. I’m excited about all the sessions, but I’m especially looking forward to our session entitled How To Be The Best You. This will be led by Merly Kammerling, founder of Me, Myself in Mind and will include some interactive workshops around how women can stand in their own space and better negotiate things like pay rises, which I found hard when I was a young cook.

Tell us about the other sessions

We have a session about building your own brand as a person in hospitality which I would have found extremely useful when I was starting out, a session on the art of goal setting and – finally – a session called Not In Service, which will look at role women can do that are connected to hospitality but don’t involve working until midnight six days a week. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it’s not for everyone.

How many people are you expecting? 

We’ve sold all of our 75 tickets. I'd like to do more but we're putting on a lunch at The Pem for everyone, which obviously constrains the numbers. We may well grow it into a proper conference next year, there's a lot of interest. I should also say it’s not just for women, although it is largely aimed at women. It's something I can see getting bigger and bigger. That said, it should not just be about 8 March. We should be empowering women in hospitality every single day of the year.

Are things improving for women in hospitality?

Women have been given a bit more of a platform in recent years but there’s still a lot to do. I’m happy to say that my team at The Pem is largely female but I’ve been to quite a few high-profile kitchens around the UK recently and they are always male-dominated spaces. Societal change takes a long time. Things aren’t going to change in two three or even 10 years. It will probably take 50 years of things going in the right direction until we get a level playing field. We must keep fighting and calling stuff out. There’s a narrative out there that things have improved in terms of inclusivity and kitchen culture more widely and that nothing bad happens anymore. That’s just not true.

Most restaurant kitchens are still run by men. What can they do to increase the ratio of female staff?

They should actively seek to have a more gender balanced team. A lot of men running kitchens would say 'it's not my fault, I don't get any girls applying'. They need to investigate why that is. Where are you advertising? What level of experience are you requiring? What’s the pay like? What’s the environment like? Women are out there. Yes it might be harder to find them, but if you’re genuine about being an equal opportunities employer that’s what you’ve got to do. And if you do get a girl apply that hasn’t got exactly the right experience give her a chance. I didn’t have much experience when I walked into my first Michelin-starred kitchen but somebody gave me a chance, and here I am. Attitude is the most important thing anyway, you can teach someone how to chop a carrot, you can't teach them not to be an arsehole.

How are things at the hotel? 

The Pem isn't quite as busy as I would like it to be but it is ticking over. We're getting the kitchen refurbished in the summer which will help massively as it will allow us to start developing the menu a bit more. We're quite limited in terms of what we can do at the moment because the kit is quite old and we’re sharing the space with the Blue Boar team.