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Entrepreneurs see red over Elnaugh gender divide comments
Former Dragons' Den star Rachel Elnaugh has got into a spat with small company owners after claiming that female entrepreneurs have a greater emotional involvement with their business than men.Posting on her blog, the high profile businesswoman said she believed "women tend to have much more emotional attachment to the companies they create than men". Quoting figures from her own research, the entrepreneur claimed whereas 54% of men are driven by money and 45% by emotion, for women the figures are 34% and 65% respectively.
But discussing the point on UK Business Forums, several business owners hit out at Elnaugh's comments.
"Women, men, children and even aliens could be emotionally attached to their businss," said David Paget, founder of telemarketing firm MytchMac. "I believe that there are certain types of people and it is very much down to each individual situation/business. I do not believe for one minute that women or men are more attached."
Another going under the name 'cjd' demanded more evidence to back up the claims. "The inference is that men are the poorer for being less emotional about their businesses," he said. "Now that flies in the face of perceived wisdom - so I'd like to see that evidence too."
'da8iwr' also criticised Elnaugh stating: "If I wrote 'men have more emotional attachment than women to their business' imagine the slating I would get for being a chauvinist."
But not all entrepreneurs disagreed with the ex-dragon's controversial statement. Drawing on personal experience, one female who runs a business with her partner said: "Whereas I am truly in love with our business, my husband is only interested in the bottom line and how much money we make. If we sold it tomorrow I would feel very empty inside but my husband would think great, more time to play golf."
Number of comments: 5
AccountingWEB.co.uk 25-Jun-2008
Categories: News
Times read: 3295
but I reckon it comes down to domestic duties and tradition. Women have long been the ones juggle work and life around the kids, and that surely influences job choice so much that you can't really create a good sample.
- I don't know Rachel but didn't she get totally over emotional when Red letter days failed? Maybe she is just trying to justify herself, or I'm just being bitchy...
Can't remember who said this, but this is true for everyone.
It would be interesting to establish whether the gender difference observed in the research correlated with the type of business type. It may be that the observed gender difference was more in the type of business undertaken rather than an inherent difference in emotional involvement.
Mike, the comments by Theo Paphitis ignited the row as this story shows. Rachel Elnaugh wrote in her blog calling on females to boycott Paphitis's businesses but later deleted the post after media coverage. The comments about women being more emotionally attached to their businesses came about directly as a result of discussion about the subject on UK Business Forums, BusinessZone.co.uk's sister website.
Dan Martin
Editor, BusinessZone.co.uk
I was expecting the article to make some reference to comments made by one of the other Dragons, quoted in a recent Guardian item:
"...Theo Paphitis, who appears on the TV show, Dragon's Den, as well as on the country's Rich List each year; he is easily one of the UK's most prominent business people. "All this feminist stuff," he said, "are we seriously saying that 50% of all jobs should go to women?" Paphitis went on to note that women "get themselves bloody pregnant and ... they always argue that they'll be working until the day before, have the baby, go down to the river, wash it off, give it to the nanny and be back at work the following day, but sure enough, their brains turn to mush, and then after the birth the maternal instincts kick in, they take three months off, get it out of their system and are back to normal". On the subject of paternity leave he suggested that he thinks "it's a bit soppy".
Also Alan Sugar about asking women prospective employees about plans for a family : "You're not allowed to ask, so it's easy," said Sugar, "just don't employ them."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/01/gender.women
PS. I would imagine sleep-deprived recent Dads would have something to say about being unaffected by having children, too !
I just know I am going to get shot down on this one, but as a male accountant with an above average number of female clients 60% of which are female and 40% male, I must tend to agree with Rachel's comments.
I certainly agree that the guys are less emotional, they look upon their businesses "as a vehicle to earn a living" and just like shares, are quite happy to move in a different direction, should the financial rewards be more appealing, and one cannot really argue with that.
The Girls however, are more likely to get emotionally involved, and look upon their businesses as a "child", their very own creation. They have carefully researched their market, invariably they know what they want to do, having usually done it as an employee in the first place, but decided they can make a better fist of it themselves, and they feel safe in the knowledge they can make it work.
Ironically profit is not necessarily their first consideration - it's more of a lifestyle choice, and therefore they will defend that choice, and their right to run their business, perhaps even more so than the Guys. The Girls are also prepared to wait for a much longer time than the Guys to effectively make a profit, even though in some cases, they are on their own and bringing up a family.
They are also prepared to make more self sacrifices than the Guys, who in all honesty, will look elsewhere for better and perhaps quicker rewards, when push comes to shove.
This has certainly been my experience with my practice over the last eleven years, and there has been no significant change - yet.
