More Cooks in the Kitchen
It’s been a while since we’ve posted here at 221B about our book club reads so I thought I’d share a quick note as Women’s History Month comes to a close. This year’s pick - Lessons in Chemistry - is far different from my selection for last year’s Women’s History Month when I wrote about My Life in Full by Indra Nooyi. If you haven’t read that book, I’ll take a moment to plug it again. It’s a great read by and about the first immigrant and woman of color to run a Fortune 50 company (PepsiCo). You can learn more about it here.
If you’ve read or know the premise of Lesson’s in Chemistry you might be thinking this is an odd pick for our book club as it seemingly has nothing to do with research, corporate investigations or the like - and it doesn’t. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the lead character is Elizabeth Zott. She’s opinionated, quirky and a rarity in the 1950s and ‘60s - a female scientist. Her work is stolen by a man, and for a number of reasons that I hope you read about on your own, Zott is forced out of academia.
Zott next lands a job as a host - of all things - cooking show “Supper at Six” where she is supposed to act the part of the then “typical” housewife by simply teaching the all-female audience to cook. Zott, however, was not at all interested in becoming a celebrity TV show host, and to her producer’s discontent, reimagined it to inspire her fellow female audience into thinking of the show as a science and chemistry lesson. After all, Zott claimed, “Cooking is serious science. In fact, it’s chemistry.”
I thought of this book for Women’s History Month because Zott was a scientist in the 1950s and ‘60s, ahead of her time, and in a field and industry where few women then ventured. And while Zott is a fictional character and there are a plethora of real inspirational women I could write about, it had me thinking about other industries and professions in which few women worked in the 1950s and ‘60s. This includes my own career in law enforcement and, later, corporate investigations.
It’s been amazing to see how my field has changed since I started in the mid-1990s. There are not only more women in law enforcement, but also in corporate investigations and other related fields. As with many industries, though, there is still more to do, and more ways we can continue to get women involved and become leaders in this and other industries. There have been countless women like the fictional Elizabeth Zott who paved the way for me and future generations so I hope all of us can continue to create paths forward for those that follow us.
