Negotiating gendered workplaces: job crafting strategies of women chefs in male-dominated kitchens in the UK

Purpose This study examines why and how female chefs in professional kitchens in the United Kingdom engage in job crafting to navigate, resist and reconfigure male-defined norms that structure competence and belonging in male-dominated occupational contexts. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 19 female chefs across 11 professional kitchens in London, data were analysed through feminist thematic analysis to illuminate how gendered structures shape women's everyday crafting practices. Findings Women chefs' job crafting is not a matter of personal choice but a contextual necessity shaped by structural inequalities, including entry barriers, exclusion from informal networks and hostile workplace cultures. Three forms emerge: normative crafting, through which women perform competence on masculine terms to secure legitimacy; transformative crafting, through which women contest macho endurance by embedding care, calm and collaboration; and strategic crafting, through which women selectively navigate between conformity and resistance. Together, these practices reveal job crafting as a gendered, relational and political process that simultaneously addresses and reproduces organisational inequalities. Originality/value This study makes two contributions. First, it develops three typologies of gendered job crafting, demonstrating how crafting practices initiate pathways for cultural change beyond individual outcomes. Second, it advances understanding of why women engage in job crafting in male-dominated workplaces, revealing that crafting is not a product of individual motivation or self-determination but a contextual necessity shaped by gendered constraints, expectations and structural negotiations.