Recent twitter debates about girls in coffee have woken me from hibernation and prompted me to write.
Why are there not more girls competing/blogging/giving talks in the coffee world? There are hundreds of reasons to be thrown around, non very conclusive, but I thought I may as well give a few thoughts (in more than 140 characters) from my perspective as a girl in coffee.
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To lay out my stance: I am not particularly feminist. (Neither am I a misogynist, just to clarify). I think we are all equal, and should support each other as human beings regardless of gender. I have however, realised that, being in specialty coffee, I am working in a primarily male-dominated industry. I am not a psychologist, I’m just going to write what I notice. Now, I happen to work with Gwilym Davies, who recently took to the stage in last season’s best ditzy-print dress to raise a question as to why the lack of females in coffee. Not so much why the lack of female baristas, as there are a fair few of us around. The question has been why the majority of barista competitors are men, why the majority of bloggers, or speakers at coffee events are men…. Why are men the loudest about coffee?
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It got me thinking. I haven’t written anything on this blog for three months, and I admit the last post I did write was a token post because I felt bad for not having kept up with writing. Now I have been prodded (by men and my conscience) to write again. One thing I have realised, after twenty-*cough* years of life, is that while we as separate gendered beings are qualified to be equal as humans, we both generally do have different approaches to life and situations. Like it or not, we are wired differently. We all act and react from our level of insecurity or security in ourselves.
The way I see it, men tend to over-compensate for insecurities by self-promotion, attempting to prove strength, confidence, knowledge, success, absence of weakness. Coffee is one of those things a lot of us still don’t know much about, there is always more to learn. The lack of what collectively we know and understand, actually hides itself in the opposite, which essentially becomes egotistically driven: “Let’s look and sounds as though we know it all, and nobody will think we don’t.”
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So, a pretty masculine sounding scenario. How do we as girls fit in to a picture like this? I think that secretly most men realise that women know they are not as macho as they want to appear, which probably makes it worse. Anyway, back to women. Women have a few possible responses, whether in coffee or in any other area. Either, we take on the Power Woman approach “We’re better than men and we’ll show them” and fight our way to the front, (or top, or wherever we’re trying to get). Lots of putting people down, being tough and harsh and intimidating, but you get to your goal (though often end up not very popular, but feared). Or, we do the clever weaving – often actually starts out very innocent and just self-defensive, but can get quite ugly. This probably comes easiest to most of us, if we are honest. This is the bitching, gossiping, ‘playing them off each other’, which undermines and ultimately is destructive. There’s the flirting and whining and pleading. The emotional guilt-laying. We’ve all done it whether intentional or not, sometimes we just don’t know how else to get things to go our way (which is often our problem, it has to be our way). And it gets us girls a bad name, let alone no respect among male peers.
The other option, and perhaps the reason more girls aren’t so vocal in coffee, is to just get on, do your job and enjoy it, leave it at that and enjoy life. Make coffee, make it as nice as possible, have fun but don’t take on too much – let the boys think it out, fight it out and work it out. After all, the rest of our lives are complicated enough.
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So, be butch, be a bitch, or switch off are our options – and none of them are sitting well with me. I love my job, I love coffee, I get very passionate about it, and want to understand it more. I get hungry to learn as much as I can. I get perfectionistic – if the coffee I make is not tasting good enough, I can’t serve it to a customer. There shouldn’t be any reason for a customer to walk out disappointed by what should be a great coffee, especially when they’ve heard hype. But there are always obstacles, because we don’t know as much as we think we know. So we have to push our levels of knowledge, learn from as many people as we can, share as much insight as we have. But I’m stuck. How do you get everyone to listen when there are (don’t get offended, boys) pushy, egotistical men who don’t want to hear that you might have a thought they haven’t had? Ideally I would love to say I am so secure that I need nobody’s approval, but realistically nobody is.
Now, I realise that I actually have it incredibly easy – I’m supported by people who believe that we should all be equal, and that I shouldn’t shy away because I’m a girl. I have also met a lot of great guys and girls in coffee who believe in me, people who ask my opinion on something because they genuinely think I might have encountered it or have ideas or solutions. For me personally, this genuine belief is the biggest encouragement I could have to keep going. And no doubt for most ‘girls in coffee’ it probably would be too. Not patronising, false encouragement. Then we as girls have a fourth option: to be passionate, to learn, to share ideas and findings, to demonstrate discoveries or theories, to compete, to speak, to blog, to relax and know we are just as valued and respected as the next guy. And to enjoy it.
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Just see us (male and female) as equal, we see you (male and female) as brilliant, amazing and equal.
And most importantly, as Gwilym told me “knowledge and doing stuff, that’s the best way.”
