If you were to study the trio of Michelin-starred chefs that we have gathered in a central London studio from, say, mid-thigh downwards, you might well conclude that the gender battle at the top end of the British restaurant game is pretty evenly poised. It is not merely the caricature of femininity we have forced them to dress in, those patent leather high-heeled shoes and the fishnet tights. It's the shapeliness of the pins contained within them. Look at those calves! Consider those ankles! Aren't they just terrific?

Let your gaze rise a little higher, though, past the tight little apron and the blinding white of the chef's jacket, names stitched at the breast, and you soon realise that these terrific legs - the upside of spending 15-hour working days on your feet - belong to three distinctly and unavoidably male chefs: Giorgio Locatelli from the starred Locanda Locatelli, Shane Osborn from two-starred Pied a Terre and Eric Chavot from the equally two-starred Capital Hotel (though it should be said that Eric does seem to be enjoying the cross-dressing thing more than is strictly necessary).

A stunt it may be but, as with all such gags, it exposes a curious truth: this was the only way we could have five Michelin stars represented in the same room and give it a touch of the female, however cartoonish. We are at the fag end of 2004, well into the 21st century. And yet, while there are 110 Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK, only three of their head chefs are women. Two of those - Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray of the River Cafe - are at the same restaurant. The other one is Angela Hartnett of the Connaught, part of the Gordon Ramsay empire.

Yes, there are more women below head chef level, but not a vast number. No official records are kept in an industry where employment patterns are notoriously fluid but, anecdotally, it's clear that over the past couple of decades we have gone from almost no women in the kitchen to, ooh, not very many at all. Even ardent cheerleaders like the great Sally Clarke, whose eponymous restaurant opened in Kensington 20 years ago this month, admits there is still an issue which needs addressing. 'There are women,' she says at first, 'it's just that they're not clowning about as celebrity chefs on television or staring out of the pages of colour supplements so you're less aware of them.' Pushed a little further, though, she accepts that it's not simply that the kitchens are packed with women who refuse to join the three-ring media circus; it genuinely is the case that the women aren't out there.

Looked at objectively there can be only two reasons for this. Either there are - despite all the advances that have been made in workplace gender equality - still blocks to women progressing in the top flight professional kitchen. Or men simply make better chefs. Reassuringly, for those who thought such debates had reached a certain maturity, I am able to find only one chef who will come close to saying the latter during my journey through London's top kitchens. The rest express a mixture of dismay, understanding and bafflement. There is also only one chef able to proclaim a regular 50-50 gender split in their kitchen, and it isn't Sally Clarke. It's Eric Chavot from the Capital, who happens to be the guy most at ease in the fishnets and the high heels. Try not to read anything into this at all.

To get to grips with what is going on there is only one place to go, Ground Zero for the whole issue: Angela Hartnett's Michelin-starred kitchen at the Connaught Hotel, in London's Mayfair. Angela is unusual among Michelin-starred chefs and not simply by dint of ovaries. She is degree educated - in history - and so entered the profession relatively late, in her twenties. She also has no formal training but that has not held her back. A few years ago Gordon Ramsay famously said that he would not have women in his kitchen because the menstrual cycle meant they would only work 'three weeks out of every month'. It is Angela's position within his organisation which proves this was, as ever, Ramsay playing to the gallery.

She was a senior member of Ramsay's team at Aubergine, sous-chef to Marcus Wareing at both L'Oranger and Petrus and then went out to Dubai as executive chef of the Gordon Ramsay Holdings operation. Angela returned to Britain in 2002 to take over the Connaught for GRH, a move which was greeted in some quarters as if it were an invasion by the Mongol horde. 'There's only one Connaught,' cried Stephen Fry, a regular under the veteran French chef Michel Bourdin, as he bemoaned the expected bastardisation of a much-loved institution. In truth, the Connaught had become an institution much as Broadmoor is an institution. It was a bastion of the worst kind of tradition, serving an ossified style of food at ludicrous prices in fading surroundings by men in tail coats who thought they had jobs for life.

Angela's Menu and Grill Room introduced a gutsy but refined style of food - Ligurienne fish soup with garlic and rosemary bruschetta, canon of lamb with aubergine parmigiana, the best ice creams in town - which drew on the Italian influences of her grandmother. She soon won both her own following and her star.

Angela invites me to spend a day at the Connaught where I am allowed to gut partridges, prep beef and veal fillets and trim girolles. It seems a very trusting approach (a number of male chefs later tell me they would never have let me anywhere near their prized ingredients) but that does sum up the mood of what is a large and serious operation, spread across multiple kitchens, serving various parts of the hotel. I have been in a number of male-run kitchens and the military metaphor of the 'brigade' of chefs, really does make sense: they tend to be sharp, brutal and brusque places. This, however, is businesslike but relaxed. It appears to be a genuinely nice place to work and the chefs alongside me say as much.

At one point I am witness to an Angela bollocking: it is the evening service and a waiter has failed to tell the kitchen that one person in a large group, all of whom are on the same menu, is a vegetarian, just as their main courses are about to go across the pass. It is the kind of offence that, normally, would bring major retribution, certainly the deployment of directed expletives and the reasonable expectation of extended humiliations. Angela delivers a dressing-down that is fierce but remarkably subtle. If the F word was used it passed me by. But it was clear from the expression on the waiter's face that he wouldn't be doing that again. 'There's no shouting or screaming just for the sake of it here,' says Sarah-Jane Quadara, Angela's Australian sous-chef. 'Issues don't just linger. It's dealt with and then we move on.' That, she says, is one element of a female-run kitchen. 'They also tend to leave you to it more,' she says. 'In a male kitchen they tend to stand over you more.'

Is that why there are still so few people in the business like Angela and Sarah-Jane? After all even the Connaught has only five women in a massive brigade of 35. 'It's one of the reasons,' Angela says, over coffee and a plate of her marvellous biscuits. 'It's also the hours. In many kitchens at this level we're talking a lot of double shifts. That's 7.30 or 8 in the morning to 11.30pm and if they're lucky they'll get only one break. Pull five of those in a row and you'll know about it.' She admits there are simple stamina issues; that the five doubles back-to-back she used to do at Petrus did kill her while the lads appeared able to carry on. 'I think it's why you see so many women on pastry or on larder, because those jobs are perceived to be easier.' Though they aren't, she says.

And then there is the business of being a woman among all those men. 'You have to be able to stand your ground. There are some men who don't like taking orders from women and that makes it tough,' she says. So you become hard. You become tough too. You learn to swear like a trooper with a Thesaurus. 'I swear so much more than any other woman I know.'

There is also the impact on personal relationships. Women seem willing to wait for their men while they work god-awful hours, Angela says, but it rarely functions the other way round. 'The only time a relationship like that worked really well was when I was with another chef.' If she has two days off they have to be totally organised. She has to know what she's doing and when. 'Time is just so precious. One bloke said to me it was like going out with a man.'

And no one should dismiss the remorseless ticking of the biological clock and the associated assumption that women are going to want to be fully involved parents which, because of the hours, many male chefs with kids simply aren't. I know one chef who used to wake his sleeping baby son when he got in from his restaurant at two or three in the morning, just so he could spend some time with him. 'I would like to have kids but if I have kids I won't be able to do this,' Angela says firmly. There is, therefore, a block on how far women in the kitchen can go. And if they see that block in the distance - if they too want children - perhaps they decide not to get on the career ladder in the first place.

What about the difference between men and women in the kitchen, starting with Ramsay's three weeks a month crack? 'Oh, if I was premenstrual I could get a bit more emotional when I was in Marcus's [Wareing] kitchen, but service would still happen. I'd just send out for Nurofen.' She does, though, think there are differences. 'Men can be compulsively neat, far more so than women. Gordon's like that. It has to be that knife. I just say f*** it, I'll use any knife.' She suspects that carries over to the food. 'Go to the River Cafe or Sally Clarke's or my restaurant and it's that little bit more rustic.' Male food can, perhaps, be rather more finicky and detailed, she says. Maybe that gets more recognition as a result.

She also thinks men are more competitive. 'Every month in this company we have to deliver our figures to headquarters, what we took and at what profit margin. Marcus and Gordon, and Sarge at Claridge's are all competing to show they've taken the most. I'm not bothered by that, as long as I am meeting the targets that Gordon and I agreed when we set up here, I'm happy. It's not like I want to run out and buy a Porsche.'

Over at Petrus (brigade of 18, one woman), chef Marcus Wareing, who as it happens does drive a Porsche, has an interesting take on this: 'That's bullshit,' he says. 'Angela is as competitive as anyone.' I tell him she denies it. 'She's always been competitive. At the original Petrus when she was my sous she'd try to get into the kitchen at the same time as me because I'd always be there at 7am. If she didn't make it she'd have this "I hate f***ing men" look on her face.' Then he says sombrely, 'this was my first encounter with the difficulties of having women in the kitchen'.

It is fair to say that Wareing's views on this issue are perhaps the most, er, traditional of those interviewed for this article. It's not that he won't work with women. After all both Angela and Sarah-Jane were with him for a long time. It's just that he thinks it's male-dominated for good reasons. 'It's in the nature of how we work, the 16- or 17-hour days. It's the pressure we put ourselves under.'

And then: 'Girls want to look beautiful. They want to put make-up on. They don't want to smell and sweat all day long.' And he says this as though he means it. So does he treat women differently when they come into the kitchen? 'Yes, I keep more of an eye on them. I don't want to see them trip up.' He does, however, accept that having them in the professional kitchen can bring something to the environment. 'They are more thoughtful than guys and they do help break through the hard-man mentality that always seems to be there.'

It's a common theme. Shane Osborn of two-starred Pied a Terre (brigade of 10, one woman) would love to employ more (although the premises is currently shut due to a fire). 'It changes the dynamic completely and in a good way. The boys become more respectful, of everybody. Women also have finer attention to detail and they can be more organised.' Giorgio Locatelli (brigade of 23, three women): 'Women are just more reasonable. Are men better at anything? Yes. Moving the big pots and talking about football.' Michel Roux Jnr of the two-starred Gavroche (brigade of 18, three women): 'I think they add an extra dimension. This stuff that they're no use one week a month and can't lift heavy pans is rubbish. It's a team business and we work together.' He says that the Gavroche has always had women in the kitchen, even when his father Albert was at the stove. So does he think that men are in any way better suited to the job? 'I cannot think of anything that a guy could do better than a girl. Any argument otherwise is pure chauvinism. Or perhaps they're frightened.'

Or maybe male chefs talk gender equality while, unconsciously, feeling something quite other. Phil Howard at the two-starred Square in Mayfair (brigade of 20, three women) is one of the most thoughtful people in his trade. Like almost everybody else he says he likes having women in the kitchen, repeats the mantra that they challenge the macho culture and can more than hold their own. But, he then points out, he is heading into the crushing, nerve jangling pre-Christmas rush. 'Then it's f***ing hard work, real hard slog and you need carthorses. Purely on physical strength a bloke is probably what you need.' So he's saying that men really are better chefs? He stares at the ceiling. 'I'm trying to work out whether anything I've just said is at all justified.'

This, it seems, is about him being in his comfort zone. He needs to know, he says, that when service hits, and it's heavy, everything is in place: all the stations have capable people at them; nobody is going to buckle. Reluctantly, perhaps even guiltily, Howard says, 'I think it's probably true that if you tell people they've got to pull five double shifts the men will come out fitter than the women.' He adds, perhaps to make amends that he feels are necessary, that women 'can cook with more care and sensitivity'.

If it's any comfort to Howard, even Eric Chavot of the Capital cannot explain the equal gender balance in his kitchen. Currently he's at four women out of 10. Recently he had six and six. At one point when he was at a previous restaurant with a smaller brigade he had three women out of five. It's always been like this, and I ask him why. 'I take anyone who walks into my kitchen and wants a job,' he says. 'If they're good.' Listening in to the conversation, Shane Osborn says, 'Plus he's a sex god that everyone loves.' This may not advance the debate but, looking at him in his fishnets and black high heels, it really is very hard to disagree.

Let this journey end where the modern story of women chefs in Britain began: Sally Clarke's restaurant on Kensington Church Street which, in turn, was encouraged into life by the example of another great female chef, Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in California. At times Clarke's kitchen has been 80 per cent female. Now it's four out of 10 which, she says 'is not terribly good', not that she is really that interested. 'I'm looking for personality, skill and the ability to get on with the team.' Gonads don't come into it.

In her experience it isn't just the women who are put off by the macho, double-shift 70-hour a week culture elsewhere. 'I interview a lot of boys who come from those sorts of kitchens and they just say they've had enough of it. We're not a carthorse kitchen. You don't get brownie points here for lifting big pots.' Instead, she says, it's a kitchen in which the words please, thank you and excuse me are heard a lot. She makes it sound very simple and indeed, the more we talk the clearer it becomes that she is genuinely baffled that any of this should still be an issue, so long after so many of the other great gender issues - in medicine and business, politics and sport - were debated to irrelevance.

She again argues that there are actually lot of good women out there and she is of course right. During my journey I came across many of them. Not just Sarah-Jane Quadara at the Connaught, but Helena Poulakka, formerly head chef to Pierre Kaufmann at Tante Claire and now running the kitchen at Sonny's in Barnes; Rachel Humphrey who has taken over as senior sous at Le Gavroche from another woman, Monica Galeti, who has gone out to run Michel Roux's venture in Mauritius. Rising through the ranks there's Anna Hough at Pied a Terre and Brigitte Gumpold at the Capital. None of these are household names yet but surely, in the 21st century, there's no real reason why they shouldn't become so?

And when they do we can stop getting men to dress up in fishnet tights and high heels. Of course, this may come as a serious disappointment to many of them, but they will probably cope, even Eric.