The Apprentice (and women)

The Apprentice, in particular the UK series, regularly pulls in millions of viewers and is popular prime-time viewing. For anyone who hasn't seen it, the format is simple:

• Between 14 and 16 candidates are normally involved.
• Their bios at the beginning of the series, and included as snippets during the episodes, showcase these individuals as often allegedly the 'best business brains' in Britain
• The candidates are then split into teams for business tasks, for the first few episodes they are normally split along gender lines
• The business tasks are designed to test different aspects of the business world, albeit in a very artificial environment.*
• The team that is deemed to or does lose each week is up for firing.
• Each team has a project manager and the losing manager selects two candidates to go into the boardroom for the potential firing.
• Finally, the winner gets a job or investment from Lord Sugar

Anyway....back to the point in hand. My frustration about the nature of tasks and the arrogance of some of the candidates is a little irrelevant really. My annoyance is the way that the women are often shown, spoken to and described on this show. Broadly I would break my annoyance down into: women who are strong and capable being portrayed as bossy and aggressive, men speaking down to the women, casual sexism and the contrast between the way men and women are described.

There are some notable examples; two famous and notable examples were Ruth Badger and Claire Young. Both women were very successful on the show, they had been successful in business before the show and continue to be successful after the show. However, they were often described as aggressive women during the tasks, when the same or similar behaviour in business was praised as decisive when talking about the men taking part in tasks. Strong women are often given the label of aggressive, and it is difficult one to shake.

Sexist attitudes are not confined to the 'grown-up' version of the apprentice. This year there were some absolute gems from the Young Apprentice, by absolute gems I of course mean bizarre sexist rubbish. The first episode sees the project manager of the boy's team label the fashion task as quite feminine. Now, not being the most fashionable of individuals I am prepared to be corrected, but I thought there were an awful lot of very famous and very talented male fashion designers. This is not even the worst or most annoying bit from the episode, but it shows how ingrained the notion of 'male' and 'female' jobs are. In the cab at the start of the task one of the candidates, David, declares that the men will win because 'they are the better sex'. This is then laughed about by the other male candidates in the cab. I tweeted about this at the time as I found his attitude and arrogance bizarre and dated. It is the fact that this was deemed a sensible thing to say on national TV about your fellow competitors, that you would win based solely upon your gender. Even if it was a joke, and I doubt it as it was preceded by the argument that even though cooking is feminine 'everyone knows men make the best chefs', it isn't funny or needed in the 21st century.It is that this language and belief system has become such a casual part of our society that no-one seems to really react.

What I intend to do, and any help is gratefully appreciated(!), is to properly document all the instances of dated or sexist language in the apprentice. I think that when we change the arena in which women are expected to work then we will start to see better moves towards equality. A Daily Mail article says that research blames women for the pay gap, this is because they allegedly do not ask for pay rises. Whereas other research suggests that women fear being seen as aggressive and pushy if they ask for a rise, a label that will only serve to hold them back in the future. We see women stuck in a vicious cycle, ask for a pay rise and they risk being seen as pushy, don't do it and they risk being seen as too cautious and not driven enough. TV shows like the Apprentice can help the portrayal of women in industry, they can remove the stereotypes and challenge them. However, at the moment I think it is falling short. I'd like to end this post with a link to some of the criticism that star of the show Lord Sugar has received for some of his comments about employing women of child-bearing age.**

*I have often reasoned that the business tasks/environment is very artificial because of the quick timings and lack of acknowledgement for the specific skills that would be needed to be successful in certain tasks. For example in Series 7 episode 2: Mobile Phone Application the candidates were required to design an App and launch it by the next day. An artificial task, that ignores the work required to design (properly), code and test an app for launching.

**These obnoxious comments are ignoring the basic fact that not all women of child-bearing age can have or wish to have children.

Women in politics

In looking at the Arab Spring and articles discussing the involvement of women I came across a piece in the Guardian about the involvement of women in recent Egyptian elections. It painted a depressing image about the options open to women. With no female presidential candidates and representation in the newly elected house standing at only 2.4% where is the female voice?

The spokeswoman for one of the leading parties, Dr Hassan, said that she saw no problem with low female involvement. Arguing that it should be left to the men to protest for their rights on behalf of the women. How can Egyptian women and female bloggers there, hope to improve their position in society if one of their key representatives does not see a problem with low involvement from half of the population?

The article also states that the UN average for the percentage of women within political bodies (houses/senates etc) within countries stands at 19%. Considerably less than 50%.
This Unicef link provides a good point of comparison. The figures are based on data from 1994. The IPU (Inter-Parliamentary Union) link shows current 2012 figures. This shows that Rwanda is top of the 'league' table with women constituting over 50% of the seats in Parliament. There are however, several nations at the bottom of the table with 0% representation for women. These not surprisingly include nations where women can not currently vote such as Saudi Arabia. The UK shares joint 54th with Malawi with just over 22% of MPs being female. Again, still considerably under 50%.

How can we hope to improve women's lives and their position within society if they do not have close to equal representation within their political systems? The next question must surely be, how can we boost and encourage greater involvement from and for women?


*The IPU link is excellent for seeing exactly where and how much representation women have in politics across the world. It provides some shocking examples that can not be ignored.