Serving men and mothers: workplace practices and workforce composition in two US restaurant chains and states

Abstract

In this paper, we apply a ‘gendered lens’ to research that has sought to understand how private firm practices and public policies shape employment conditions. We report on a study of the realities facing a highly female-dominated job, that of waiter in low-end chain restaurants. Through interviews with managers at 16 sites of two international restaurant chains located in Seattle, Washington and Chicago, Illinois, we examined how the gender and family caregiver compositions of waiter workforces intersect with private employers’ practices related to waiter wages, fringe benefits, and staffing and scheduling and preferred job qualifications, on the one hand; and with mandated minimum wage regulations, on the other. Male waiters were most heavily concentrated in the chain with more generous benefits and input into scheduling, while the largest proportions of women were found in the chain offering few or no benefits and little scheduling control. Sites with the most waiter–caregivers came from both chains but were mostly in Seattle, aligning with a US state policy context assuring a higher minimum wage. Paralleling those findings, we observed that managers in especially male-heavy settings stressed intellectual and experience qualifications for waiter positions, while within more female and dependent caregiver employing sites they prioritized factors such as personality and ‘good hygiene.’