The end of macho kitchen culture?

That doesn't mean, however, that the restaurants we all eat in are the aggressive male bastions of shouty testosterone they once were. Evidence suggests the balance is slowly being redressed, even if female chefs tend to stay under the radar compared to their more visible male counterparts. Well, when was the last time you heard of Lesley Crosfield of the Albannach and Nicola Braidwood of Braidwoods, both of whom have been quietly slogging way to retain their Michelin stars year after year?

Behind the scenes, inroads are being made. The junior sous-chef at Andrew Fairlie's double Michelin-starred restaurant at Gleneagles is female; the expanding Edinburgh restaurant group owned by Victor and Carina Contini, and the Sisters group in Glasgow, are both run by female executive chefs; one-third of the kitchen staff at the Two Fat Ladies group in Glasgow are female; and so it goes on.

So far, so good and in the recent past, Scotland has had its fair share of pioneering women chefs, among them Gunn Eriksen, whose Altnaharra Inn, Sutherland, was the first in Scotland to gain two Michelin stars in 1994; Hilary Brown at La Potiniere in Gullane; Claire Macdonald of Kinloch Lodge on Skye; and Shirley Spear, founding chef at Three Chimneys on Skye.

None of these women is still cooking; all, bar La Potiniere where Mary Runciman is co-chef with her husband, have been replaced by men. But they remain role models nonetheless. You might say Scotland is becoming a mirror-image of the scene in London, where two women - Clare Smythe of the triple Michelin-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and Angela Hartnett of the Michelin-starred Murano - have become role models for a younger generation of women chefs, Florence Knight of Polpetto among them.

But can parity ever be possible in a profession where being on your feet for up to 18 hours at a time is de rigueur - along with constant pressure to produce consistently good food while tolerating the intense heat and noise of the kitchen, enduring the physical demands of lifting, cutting, boning, blanching, searing, baking, basting; and living with the ever-present threat of being blasted out by chef if you put one foot wrong?

Given these physical and psychological drawbacks, it seems incredible that anyone, male or female, would seriously want to make a career out of cooking. No wonder the most important criteria for any chef appointment are commitment and passion.

Despite the apparent odds, colleges report a sharp increase in the number of young women applying for professional cookery and hospitality courses; and restaurants have a constant stream of trainee female chefs seeking jobs or internships. Willie McCurrach, head of food, hospitality and tourism at City of Glasgow College, says girls on the professional cookery courses currently outnumber the boys by 60:40, and the ratio for the hospitality course is 72:28 - the highest tally in a long-running trend. He admits there is a natural drop-off before the completion of some of the courses, but says this is mostly the result of female students getting paid jobs in the industry following work placements. The industry revolves around women, he claims, even if they're not always at the front end. Gordon Ramsay and Michel Roux Jr, he points out, could not do without the strong, talented women they have in their kitchens (Roux's kitchen at the two-starred Le Gavroche in London's Mayfair is run by a female head chef and female sous chef; both Smythe and Hartnett are Ramsay protégées).

Jacqueline O'Donnell, executive head chef at two Sisters restaurants in Glasgow, will this week become Scotland's most high-profile female chef when she appears on national television as a competitor in the Scottish heat of the current series of BBC's Great British Menu, starting tomorrow. She is the first Scottish female, and the first Glaswegian, ever to appear in the nine years of the cooking contest, and will compete against Stevie McLaughlin, head chef of Restaurant Andrew Fairlie, and Neil Rankin, Scots-born head chef at the Smokehouse in Islington, London. Their mentor is Dundee-born Jeremy Lee, chef-patron of Quo Vadis in London's Soho.

O'Donnell's insight into the gender dynamics of the hotly competitive TV kitchen is fascinating. As one of only five women chefs among 28 in the current series, many of whose restaurants are Michelin-starred, she detected a clear male-female difference when the heat was on. "There were swear words and lots of running about among the boys, whereas the girls just got on with it," she says. "The girls didn't play to the camera as much as the boys."

One male contestant "epitomised the way guys are in the kitchen: tense, head-down, aggressively competitive. He was not a happy chappy when he was voted out, and he left without saying goodbye". She felt many of the men had the attitude that they were only there to win.

She says she doesn't have that competitive streak, but does not see this as a disadvantage.

During the peer-reviewing part of the competition, the women always backed down when their mentor suggested, for example, that the seasoning needed adjustment. "They would agree and do it again, but when they said the same thing to one of the guys, they wouldn't back down. When Emily [Watkins, chef-patron of the Kingham Plough in Chipping Norton] was marked down, she asked the men in her team, 'Where did I go wrong?' They never did that; they'd say, 'I'm not changing it'. I found that very interesting," says O'Donnell, adding that when judge Sat Bains told Emily she was a "very good cook", it was seen by some as a sexist insult, though he may have meant that she was a gastro-pub chef rather than a Michelin-starred restaurant chef. No matter: she reckons "if he'd said that to one of the guys, they'd have had a fit".

O'Donnell left St Bride's secondary school in East Kilbride at 16, armed with O Grades in French, Italian and Spanish, and in home economics, which she only reluctantly took after dropping her preferred option of woodwork and metalwork on the advice of her grandmother. "My gran told me I should drop those men's subjects and learn how to run a house instead. I didn't think I'd enjoy home economics but I ended up loving it and am still in touch with my teacher, who really encouraged me to pursue cooking as a career." She attended Motherwell College for two years, then went out into the industry in various Scottish establishments before working in a small hotel in France.

On her return to Scotland she became so disaffected by the "obnoxious" behaviour of male chefs that she decided to go out on her own, and has not looked back. Now 43 and a mother of two, she is to be food ambassador for events at the City Chambers during the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July.

Although she describes herself as charismatic and bubbly, there's no doubt she has a very firm hand and is not afraid to lead her all-female team from the front. "I like to think I'm a role model for younger women chefs, and am pleased that lots come in to ask for work placements from school or jobs after college. Hopefully they can see this can be a great career," she says.

"However, where I am different from men is that I see cooking as part of my life and not the be-all and end-all." Flexible work rotas for all her staff is no barrier, she says, to professional cooking. "Women are good chefs because they multi-task instinctively and are less likely to get into a flap when the going gets tough. Here, long shifts are divided up into manageable sections where everybody mucks in to finish a task, so that breaks can be factored in if the chefs have children to care for."

She was appalled to hear recently of a male commis chef being thrust against the kitchen wall of a restaurant kitchen by his head chef, who punched and swore at him then punctured his bicycle tyres - all because he hadn't chopped the parsley properly. She reckons professional kitchens, some of which she describes as "cocky, arrogant and masculine", would become nicer places to work in if the men could only embrace their feminine sides.

Being the only woman in an all-male team is not for the faint-hearted and 26-year-old Laura McNee is described as "no shrinking violet who holds her own in a tough environment" by her boss Andrew Fairlie, who took her on as junior sous-chef at his two-star Gleneagles restaurant six years ago. She'd working as a potwash in an Italian restaurant in Forres, arrived at his door as a stagiaire and basically refused to leave. "She asked for a job and I told her 'no', but she wouldn't go home. I'm glad I kept her on because she's a fantastic wee girl, all five feet nothing of her," he says.

For her part, she reckons there's no difference between male and female chefs, though perhaps women are more nurturing than men. "There's a lot of pressure put on you, but I wouldn't say it's harder if you're a female, even if you have to cope with hormonal ups and downs," she says. "I see young commis and chefs de partie red-eyed and panicking when the heat is on, and I understand where they're coming from because I've been there. They see me as one of them, because I started at the bottom too. My job is to calm them down and reassure them when they say, 'Oh God I can't do this'. It's not about shouting and screaming; it's about nurturing talent and passion.

"I've heard horror stories from other kitchens about chefs being pushed around the kitchen and having their knives stolen. To be the best you have to work with the best and learn from each other, rather than constantly being in competition."

Over at Victor and Carina Contini's Scottish Cafe and Restaurant, 38-year-old Suzanne O'Connor has also come through the ranks from commis to sous, and is now executive chef of the group's expanding empire, including Ristorante Contini (formerly Centotre) and a third new Edinburgh venture yet to be opened.

She admits she is the only one of her group of girlfriends at catering college still to be working in the industry. "All the rest have left to have babies or do other things, but I can't imagine a better career than this, despite the long hours and stress," she says.

Mind you, that doesn't stop people assuming she is the kitchen porter or a secretary because she's the only woman in the kitchen. "When workies come in to fix an oven or fit a fridge, they'll say, 'Put the kettle on, dear', or they'll actually ask one of the commis what the problem is, instead of me."

But she does worry that there aren't enough young women coming through, and wonders if there's an exodus out of the industry following the realisation that it's not all glam and glitz. She is currently recruiting for staff at the new Contini restaurant and sees very few females applying. "There would be nothing better than for an experienced female chef to come on board, because you know she will be strong, organised, focused and able to multi-task, which is vital for the job.

"Cheffing is hard physical work, and many women move into managerial roles. We women excel at organising kitchens, but the only way you can do that is by moving up through the ranks of hard knocks. To be able to keep the whole brigade under you together, you have to have done it all. That's the only way to earn the respect of the guys."

Great British Menu's Scottish heats are on BBC Two this Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (7.30pm), concluding on Friday at 6.30pm and 7.30pm