While the home kitchen is traditionally identified with women, men have dominated the star positions in the restaurant and hospitality industry over the years.

That inequality has been changing more recently however, as high-profile female chefs like Alice Waters and Ina Garten top best-seller lists with books related to food and host popular television cooking shows.

Along with a rise in female restaurateurs, women are exploring other careers in cooking and creating niche industries, like personal home instruction or cupcake-centric bakeries, that emphasize, rather than downplay, a "just like Mom used to make" aesthetic.

Maureen Drum Fagin, the director of career services for the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City , discusses the growing trend of home arts as small business and how changes in the food industry may be creating more opportunities for women.

WSJ.com: Have you observed any changes in the ratio of men and women enrolling in cooking school?

Ms. Fagan: Traditionally, there haven't been as many women in restaurant kitchens. That's certainly increased over the years. Our enrollment at the Institute is close to about 50/50 -- it might even be slightly skewed towards women. And while a lot of them do look to head into more traditional culinary careers such as working in [restaurants] and hotel kitchens, there definitely is a percentage who look to go into some alternative fields.

WSJ.com: What are some of those alternative jobs in the food industry?

Ms. Fagan: There is personal chefing, where you're cooking for a family regularly, leaving a few meals' worth of food there at their house.

We have individuals now who will cater small dinner parties -- that's their forte -- really focusing on the dinner party catering aspect. [These events are] still small [and] manageable. They are able to execute the whole thing from start to finish and have control versus a large catering situation, where you have to serve a lot of people and they don't feel the connection to the food as much.

A third area would be personalized home instruction. This is for people, who, maybe they've got this fantastic new tricked-out kitchen with Sub-Zero fridges and Viking ranges and they have no idea how to use this high-end equipment. So they might hire an individual to come in and teach them really how to cook and utilize all these pieces of equipment to [their] fullest.

[The home instructors] might also consult on getting the appropriate cookware and other gadgets. Sometimes there is home instruction for the individual, but sometimes for a group of people as well. [It can] turn into more of an entertaining situation, where [people] can invite five of their friends over into their kitchen and they can all learn how to cook a little bit. And they can sit down and eat at the end of the evening and really enjoy themselves. I've seen that trend more and more as well.

Full article continued at The Wall Street Journal Online.