OK, the women are not doing well at all but these last two tasks, making and selling beer and flat pack furniture seem biased towards the men.

While saying this, and equal opportunities are all around us now, as some of them said this week, their expertise is in fashion (Clothes...........clothes, Sir Alan) who tends to think designing of clothes is akin to designing flat pack furniture.

Of course, brewing beer is another task, how many women drink the stuff and would know how the beer drinkers choices would automatically be, as some of the men obviously did.

Perhaps, we could have a task designing and selling handbags or high fashion shoes and cocktails, just to even things up.

I think you're looking way too much into it

Indeed. Shugs is just making them jump through hoops for a laugh. He probably already knows which 5 will end up in the final and which 1 has the best business plan.

looking into it all way too much as the person above has already said

Indeed the bias was defended by the silly comment that creative people were creative whatever they did . True perhaps for Leonardo - who could bash out the odd chair and painting and maths equation but I don't see JK Rowling painting , or Tracey Emin working on car design, or Madonna designing planes, or well known clothes designers designing chairs. It was the old send for the man in the backroom with Brains mentality.

Its not so much the task subject but the skills. Fewer of the girls will probably have ever studied sciences, physics or engineering,and even fewer metalwork or woodwork or technical drawing. In task 2 its more likely, even today, that more of the boys will have mastered the art of working out ratios and mixing liquids. Only the Doctor seems to do anything amongst the girls that requires those skills, and she couldn't be used for every job that might need those skills. In this weeks task, the key is to have one person who did woodwork, technical drawing, or engineering at some point. Alex obviously had, judging from his drawings. That almost certainly produces the result we saw - something that moves and isn't just a box. It could have been a boy or a girl with that ability , but its far more likely to be a boy. It might have been a fairer test in 2011, where Zoe and Tom were both engineers.

The problem is that its probably equally possible to have a sexist task orientated the other way around, and it runs foul of the current PC ethos pointing out there is a bias, as much as it does the show having one. You also only have two shows to judge on - when it may be a trend thats insignificant in the total series and there may be tasks that play against the male strengths too. If show two tested the two males with drinks proposals, you wonder what (or who) show 3 was testing, and what follows when you have to match any similar female proposals.

Sorry but I have to agree with this too.


Or like Victoria Beckham designing the bodywork for a Range Rover model?

I agree with the OP regarding the beer task but the second task was well within their capabilities and skillset .
We've seen in the past the guys struggling when it comes to a fashion based task.

No individual can be good at every task . Some you will like and be interested in, others you dislike. The flaw in the Apprentice is that a person can be fired when they have to succeed at a task they dislike and have zero knowledge of.

Business principles apply to all tasks. Some principles will feature more heavily than others given any particular task but as far as I can see, there is no gender bias whatsoever. You either have a business skill set, with particular strengths and weaknesses therein, or you don't.

The girls inability to function as a team shows a major weakness individually as well as collectively.

I disagree with that I am looking too far into it, lets have some blokes making and selling false nails
it would be far more entertaining than flat pack furniture.

True - regarding the second task. IMO the girls' downfall was that they squabble and talk over each other much more than listen and consider suggestions.

The only problem I had with the last two tasks were they were incredibly hard. Coming up with something new in an overcrowded market in a day or so, you have to give them credit (except the box which was just awful).

I think the difference was the guys spotted where the main focus of the task should be, and the girls (and Tim) didn't. The beer wasn't so much the product as the sales, and the flat pack was all about the product.

I think they would've suffered the same if the task was more "feminine", they would've sat around diamond encrusting names on fake nails, while the guys would've just gone simple and flogged boatloads of them.

I am wondering if the girls , given a task that they can identify with, might, just might, pull together and do it right, is it just a clash of personalities or they have little interest or expertise in the tasks they are set.

Did either team design or make anything?

The beer was previously brewed and they added some flavours - you could do the same at home with a zero skill level.
The REAL design and manufacture of the furniture was undertaken by the firm of consultants used by both teams.

If anything, the task was solely on the ability to sell crap. In the case of the furniture the people "buying" it were fully aware that they would part with no money and take no delivery.

It's car crash reality TV - nothing else.

What was their excuse week one?

Personally I find it a little off putting that you seem to think the girls are all beauty and nails, and the guys beer drinking Ikea regulars. In the past we had fake tan selling, fake nails, fake hair, biscuits, ice cream, would you say the girls had an unfair advantage those weeks?

Yeah Jackie Always wanted to say that

Well, probably most of those tasks were in mixed teams.

This week's episode I did think it was a bit unfair, as you could see that none of the girls had any creativity (only knowing what they would like to see or have).

Mind you, next week will also be a chore for many of the girls (getting their nails dirty)

But the tasks didn't rely on that. Over the last two tasks the girls have proved better at pitching, advertising, and sales, and the boys have been just as argumentative. On more business skills the girls were ahead.

Last weeks task failed for the girls because they failed to do one, quite complicated, sum right. They were unlikely to ever recover from that - as it cost them c £500 in potential sales. They failed by a bigger margin because they picked two locations that in the event didn't work - which was pretty random. They also seem to have lost sales overall by selling to retail, as seemingly required, better than the boys. This week the girls failed to design a product, but still managed to do things after that better. You have to ask how it is the boys managed to get the right quantities of flavouring into their casks and the girls didn't. And then how one of the boys could come up with an idea, and had the mechanical understanding, and ability to draw the technical drawings to make it work, when none of the girls could think of more than a box. The answer almost certainly is that one or more of the boys has been taught how to do that, and the girls haven't.

The furniture task was just not the same as the similar tasks where they have to sell someone elses idea thats already deveoped in a final form. That does test some of the key business skills. Designing furniture requres technical ability in addition to, and before, those. Someone with the right experience comes with an enormous advantage. If you fail to actually have a good idea, or can't make it work, you can be the best in the world at every other business skill, and you still won't sell a box.

Does it matter? Well no if the next few tasks are things Alex, or some other male, has no built in advantage in.

Its all a bit odd though. The related tasks where he tests two people with a similar idea as PM, don't actually tell Lord Sugar which would make better partner . Last week they told him that neither of them was a great PM, and one was undermined by his production team not being able to do sums and his sales team selling too well. The loser, in some ways, was a better PM. And if you are testing someone's elses ability to make drinks or furniture, because its relevant to their proposal, its not a great way of deciding that someone else with completely different interests and skills isn't worth keeping.

Whuh? Since when was interior design macho?!

Previous week, yeah, beer's a little more stereotypically blokey, but I don't know that it gave the boys an advantage. About half the boys' team didn't drink, including much of the half that were sent off to develop the product. I don't know that traditional gender roles have much truth to them, and I think last week's ep is actually quite a good example of that. One man even got fired!

It was intentional to use extreme examples to make my point.

Not as sexist as you think as it had to be something ultra female which the men would not find as easy as beer making and selling.

The tasks you mention are in other series, the thread mentions the last two in this series. Lets see if the next ones are as slanted to the females as beer and flat pack furniture was to the men.

I was hoping that it might be something which appeals to the girls team and their interest in it just might help them bond together, but I wont hold my breath.

Great post, very interesting.

I'm pretty sure most females are conversant with the idea of furniture, and what looks good and what doesn't even more so than blokes, who would be happy with a cardboard box to stand the TV on. They didn't have a idea, which was the problem, and when they did have an idea ( I thought a multi functional cube was a good idea), they totally screwed it up and made a garden planter!

The beer task was more in the line of a cooking project, so to say the girls were unfairly disadvantaged is wrong, unless they lacked taste buds (from what I could tell their beer wasn't that bad!), any sense of how to up scale production etc, which is why the ruined 2 kegs. So no their hasn't been a gender bias, in fact if any it was towards the men!

They need to stop arguing and actually pull together, they are a shocking example of women in the business world, (I wonder now why there's not many women in top jobs).

Fear not OP seems as if the groups will be getting mixed in the next few weeks, about time too as those Women just can't stop bickering, I almost thought some hair-pulling was about to take place in the boardroom also.

Sorry OP but I don't think it matters what the tasks are about. The whole idea is to be taken out of your comfort zone and tested. if it means doing things that are unfamiliar to you, then so be it.

It's a little old fashioned your view I think. We live in a modern world, equal opportunities and all that. Women drink these days! boy can they drink! And plus they like all these flavoured drinks anyways. All these fruity pretty drinks are usually aimed at women.

The furniture task too, it didn't really matter as both men and women are equally capable of coming up with some creative kind of furniture. it's something we all look at and go shopping for, so I don't see how either task was really biased towards the men.

The girls downfall was their attitude and total lack of team work. They cannot work as a unit, well in the case of this batch of girls. Far too much bitching and high emotions, zero professionalism.

I agree that the teamwork and bitchyness was dreadful but how many women would put flat pack furniture as a skill they have or drinking beer for that matter.

Its not old fashioned, you will get women who can but I bet there is an awful lot more who wouldnt want to do it, let alone under pressure on TV.

Are these tasks realistic in a business sense of the word, I dont think so. Reality is if you have got a product, you research it, product test it, feasibility study its marketplace and manufacturing workshops, none of this is done is a 48 hour timescale, so what exactly does it show.

All it really shows is the ability of some can work in a blind situation better than others and have some previous ability in the required field.

Will it bring better candidates to the fore, well judging by past winners, not many at all and several who didnt win have done better by not winning and sticking to their field of expertise and done very well indeed, Ruth Badger for one.

Good discussion going on here, we will not all agree but different views make the world go round.

But I think the point you are missing, is that, these tasks are about solving a problem ok. The problem is the task, you work to provide a solution. The task itself is irrevelent in that you should be able to work together, with your team which incorporates people with different abilities and skill sets. The team should be capable of overcoming the problem and finding a workable solution. If it means making a flavoured beer, or making flat packed furniture or buying and selling to the public it doesn't matter. A whole variety of skills are needed.

If the team is well coordinated and each member designated a task and there is good and solid leadership, then whatever they have been set out to do, can be overcome with some degree of success.

IMO there is no excuse really. the failing of the tasks has come down to the girls inability to work together, to listen to each other and properly organise themselves. Let's be honest,they have been a total shambles up to now. I don't think it would have mattered what the tasks were,they still would have shown the same failings each and every time.