I don't know if anyone has ever thought about this but if you're a woman and you go on The Apprentice it's best to think like a man. Generally speaking, men tend to remove 'emotion' from problem-solving, women tend to retain 'emotion' when problem-solving. This represents one of the key differences between men and women.

The best example of a woman with an emotion-free approach to problem-solving was Ruth Badger. She was dispassionate, single-minded and hired by Sugar. Actually, Sugar hired her and Michelle Dewberry in the 2006 series, two hiring scenes were filmed but only one was shown - but that's for another thread!

Compare Badger with Lucinda. Lucinda can't remove emotion from the tasks - hence why people find it near impossible to work with her. Notice how emotion got the better of her with the greeting card task, with the car task - she needed Lee to help her. She's also cried the most - again, proof how her emotion got the better of her.

Claire is the Ruth Badger of this series. She's not quite as ruthlessly determined, there's a bit of softness peeking through from time to time, but she does remove any emotional baggage from the tasks. The Apprentice shows when a woman removes her natural emotional response from a task she can be a formidable candidate, superior to the male candidates. I suspect there is a good chance Claire will win this series of The Apprentice.

Dont be fooled by Claire. Shes just as devious as Alex or Jenny Celerier. I've forgotten the number of times she has made disparaging remarks about the other candidates to camera.

The remarks abotu women and emotion? Well, it was proved by Helenes sob story? What the hell did that have to do with business?

The trouble with Claire is that she tries to make out it's virtue to be a 'gobshite' - while this might make her fans with those who think being a loudmouth is the key to being an 'empowered woman' having to work alongside someone like that on a longer term basis would be a real pain in the ass!
If braggadocio and bluster is what Sir Alan is looking for then sure she's his 'man' - but if he wants someone who can perform without setting everyones teeth on edge he would be better choosing someone like Alex.

[quote=HiTechLvr;24249076]The trouble with Claire is that she tries to make out it's virtue to be a 'gobshite' - while this might make her fans with those who think being a loudmouth is the key to being an 'empowered woman' having to work alongside someone like that on a longer term basis would be a real pain in the ass!
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Agree with all of the above well set out

Except in the sense that he has never hired one of the strong females and tends to go for duller less forceful males too. Michelle gets the job for being competent, even more able on her CV than she showed on the show and non threatening.

There's also a built in discontinuity in SAS's version of the show compared to at least the first three US series. In the US smart women (usually lawyers) go too early (as Sara and Miriam and a few others do in the UK) but the winner usually has an impressive task track record and in some cases (Kendra) was far better at everything than her competition. In the Uk the winners emerge at the interview stage (or the opposition folds) and we end up with people who might have got the job on CV anyway but who didn't achieve that much in the series. I think Michelle was actually a pretty strong winner given Ruth's downside but on the basis of the UK tasks all the UK winners were outperformed by others.

Interestingly Katie in the Sun reckons the winner will be a quiet (invisible) one - which i take to mean Helene which would take the process one stage further producing a winner on the basis of anything but performance over the series. If you have a series where the winner was invisible it does make the series' concept look very dubious - rather like bringing the Big Brother winner in to the house on the last day.

Claire winning however would prove the opposite -that he is prepared to take a tough female as long as they look changeable and task performance matters.

So do men...

Agreed. If you're female, you also have to dress like a man, in a black business suit (no colourful berets) and remove 'female' hobbies from your CV (no aromatherapy) in order to be taken seriously.

I think there are too many generalisations.

Ruth was a great candidate but not because she was thinking like a man.

If thinking like men is what Sir Alan is looking for then surely a man would be his only option.

Agreed.