The women on The Apprentice

[WidowWadman]

Second week of men vs women, with me watching from behind the sofa and cringing badly.

Both weeks the women's team explicitly shows lack of any acumen when it comes to the finance side of the project, and concentrates on coming up with a pretty crap product and bickering and stitching each other up.

Is it the editing? Or have they purposely recruited female canditates who showed no interest in margins?

It will get better once the teams are mixed up, but the current set up just screams "women can't do business".

I just wonder whether that's by design or accident.

It's the editing. You can see it- I was thinking, this time, they are not even pretending that it's nor heavily edited.

Not

But the editing can't really make them mess up their financial modelling, can it?

Oh, I'm SOOOOO glad someone agrees with me on this. I love the apprentice but the first few weeks always bug me for this reason. How come the boys always look like they have business heads and the girls always complain that they can't do maths?

I had this argument on FB last week (and was told by many men that i was wrong), but it's like on the boys team you have 7 good business men and 3 'characters' and on the womans you have 3 good business woman and 7 good looking idiots 'characters'

The editing can make it look like anything, really. People, words, all cut and spliced.

We don't know what the boys' financial modelling was do we? We didn't get to see them talk about margins or costs or anything.

But in this case; they couldn't do the maths! But I agree it is crap when they do men v women. It's such a dated way of forming teams.

We saw they boys talking numbers last week. So much so that there product was rubbish, numbers was all they mentioned

Dowagershump not today, agreed, but last week they were talking a lot about margin (I remember, because I noticed)

Hopefully they mix up next week

Yeah they did focus on the boys numbers last week and we had no idea what the women were charging, nor what their margins were. That's what I hate about the programme - you never get to see both sides of any particular debate. It's really crap editing IMO.

And yes, I also hate the men vs women thing they do.

Surely that should read the 'ladies' versus the 'boys'. And no, we didn't get to see the financial model from the 'boys' because of the editing. It's just to spice it up.

Widow, come on, you should be ashamed of yourself for believing such shit nonsense.

I don't like the 'ladies' versus the 'boys' either.

This made me cringe too. I had never watched the Apprentice right from the start before, so had never seen the "ladies" against the "boys" before.

Painful viewing.

It's entertainment. I wouldn't be surprised if much of it is staged as well as carefully edited to match what they think will draw in the viewers. Sexism is very popular.

Editing can't make people say things they didn't say in the first place though, and they did go into Amazon, offer them a million products for their first order and seem extremely unclear on their margins in that specific moment. Which is a bit shit as was the product

The girls team have doen products for babies/children two weeks running now. And are defendign their decisions with 'well i am a mother'. cringe.

I wouldn't be surprised if the people who recruit for this, consciously or subconsciously, recruit more capable men but don't recruit the most capable women (just reading in The Gender Delusion and reading about how people like confident, competent men in work scenario, but are put off by similarly confident, competent women). As pp said, sexism is popular. And I agree that the editing could completely skew things.

That said, haven't seen it. Watched a bit of the first and second series, but can't bear it any longer.

Why didn't they come on here and use us as their focus group? They'd have been left in do doubt about how shit their product was.

no doubt

Is one of the contestants called Kate Hoppen? or Katie Hoppen or something?

I have no doubt the apprentice perpetuates sexism as it isn't in a vacuum. But I find I spend a lot more time thinking what idiots the 'boys' are, they are so full of meaningless business lingo and bullshit. But then I have little time for business bollocks. So maybe that has a bearing on it.

Me and my partner were discussing more how the guy who kept saying 'good questions' in an utterly disingenuous way had no idea with how to deal with someone with a lot more life experience who would know his onions, and would not be impressed by a patronising twerp.

And they focused on the 'boys' sidelining the guy who came up with the idea.

So 'ladies' bad at figures, 'boys' bad with understanding people. Stereotypes. But does if make the 'ladies' look worse? It depends on what you think is more important. I'd say you have accountants to do your numbers for you, but if you're a jumped up twerp, you're a jumped up twerp. So do the 'ladies' look worse or is that only if you look through a particular lens of what 'business' looks like

They also shook hands an awful lot, Alice, and in such a manly fashion. DH and I ended up turning it into a drinking game...

Yes! You've reminded me. I muttered at that bit too. Women pick a project leader and get on with it, of course with the editing showing a 'woman scorned'. Men dick about with handshake showing what businessmen they are.

And (now I've started) the lying on the men's team. The 'oh yes we checked but that product already exists'. Liar! Although tbf one of the other 'boys' did seem pick him up on that.

I also muttered at the ridiculous use language to try and impress 'you put the vegetation in here'. Vegetation? You mean food waste. Vegetation does not make you sound like a clever executive if you have any life experience at all.

YY the vegetation! We were a bit at that one too

What is wrong with products for babies or children? The woman who dreamed up Spanx is a millionaire many times over.

I agree that there is a lot of jargon and long (and sometimes wrong) words spouted by the men, purely to impress one another and establish their places in the pecking order (this has to be established before men in a group can do anything).

Whether that is impressive to the viewer depends purely on the viewer really, ditto the presentation of the women's group dynamic or individual abilities -- if you buy the line that appears to be peddled by the editing and conclude Men = confident, articulate, clearheaded about numbers, good at business/Women = catty, fussy, tetchy, muddled and not good at business maybe you have a predisposition to not let women win for losing. The heavy editing that gives the public the usually accepted narrative is hostile to women at worst and irresponsible at best. A shame, because this concept has the potential to challenge the accepted script.

Obv people here on this thread are a bit more conscious of what is being presented and why, but most people will just have their prejudices reinforced, which is a real pity because every negative portrayal of women has an impact.