BARACK Obama was first sworn in nearly six years ago and it was big news. The election of the USA’s first black president was going to change everything and many assumed that he’d sail through his two terms with the whole world treating black and white equally. So, for those many, this week’s Republican revival is a surprise.

Other much-trumpeted step-changes in recent history include the revolution known as the Sixties heralded by the election of J F Kennedy and, nearly twenty years later, the election of the first woman prime minister of the UK with Margaret Thatcher in 1979. It could appear that in just a few decades, due to these major appointments, we should’ve experienced the liberalisation of sex for the good of the world, the end of colour discrimination and the equalisation of women in our society. The last fifty years have been heady times indeed. Or have they?

One subject I’m particularly qualified to comment upon is the role of women in society. Why? Well, I’m married to a woman (and it’s my second go), I’ve two daughters and a female cat and dog. I was brought up by my mother, my grandmother lived at home, I had three sisters and even the family dog was a bitch. Maybe unsurprisingly, my father worked away from home a lot. I do know that hand-me-downs were challenging but I can discuss makeup and fabrics as good as anyone and I value my feminine side.

But it’s the last 17 years in the hospitality business that’s really taught me because, for various reasons, these days the restaurant industry employs a higher proportion of women than men. There are a greater proportion of women as managers in the industry than there were traditionally so there’s been some positive movement there. But other reasons for the growth in numbers includes childcare provision and choices as well as education. Whether there’s enough sexual equality in our industry today than a few decades ago is debatable but we’re moving in the right direction.

But what I also learnt is that, on a customer front, it’s women who decide where the majority eat out. So if we, as an industry, don’t get it right for them, we don’t get much business.

Think about it. A few decades ago, eating out was not the general leisure pursuit it’s become over the last twenty years or so. For most, a restaurant was reserved for those special dates such as anniversaries, birthdays and the husband making up for some dreadful mistake – and he usually booked it. It was a treat for the lady.

But nowadays, you can bet that if there’s two couples meeting for a meal out, it’ll be the women arranging it. Nothing wrong with that; it’s just a general observation and one that we as restaurateurs have to be aware of. And in general it’s women that organise the larger restaurant parties and, if there is only one parent available, take children to restaurants.

It’s clear that, apart from the, predominantly, male celebrity chefs, women have a major role in the restaurant industry: from management and recruitment; through staffing and administering; to determining our turnover.

But did this happen because we had a woman prime minister? Did the Sixties really make sexual attitudes that different from those prevalent over previous centuries? Do women really have equal opportunities to men? Has everyone stop noticing the colour of someone’s skin and judging them on their ethnic origin? Do these single events change the world?

Well, one other earth-changing happening event worth noting was back in the Nineties. The start of Ready, Steady, Cook had a profound influence on the UK’s general public who, from its inception, were shown how to construct a Michelin-starred dish out of a tin of peaches, one salmon fillet and a packet of gravy browning. As a result, there are now more people watching cookery programmes than in the sixties, seventies of the eighties. However, as a percentage of the population, there are also now fewer people cooking in the UK than there’s ever been.

It’s worth noting that there’s at least as much interest in cookery programmes in the USA as there is here. Worrying isn’t it? Maybe, in his final couple of years, to give him a legacy, Barack Obama could work on getting Americans to eat proper food. But, as it’s getting more and more difficult for us to do that in the UK, he’d probably be better off cooking the lame duck he’s likely to become.