Women bosses are more ruthless

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Women bosses are more ruthless than me
By Georgina Littlejohn Last updated at 11:50am on 26.03.08

Apprentice boss Sir Alan Sugar claims female employers are more ruthless than their male counterparts.

He says women bosses are more likely to discriminate against mothers and less inclined to consider employing them.

The businessman, whose reality TV show The Apprentice returns to BBC1 tonight, added: "Be under no illusion. There are women employers who are more ruthless than men.

"They are more conscious of not employing other women because they feel they're not going to get the value of work out of them."

Sir Alan, executive chairman of electronics firm Amstrad, said it was only fair that employers asked female workers about their plans to have children.

"I think it's right for women to volunteer the information," he said. " Companies have no divine duty to help with childcare, companies employ people. It's the Government's responsibility to provide childcare." But his comments caused anger among women bosses, including Erika Watson, executive director of Prowess, the association for female entrepreneurs.

She said: "Dinosaur attitudes like these threaten the UK's competitiveness. Too many talented women are not achieving their potential in the workplace because of the discrimination such attitudes encourage."

Glenda Stone, co-chair of the Government's Women's Enterprise Task Force, added: "When men are ruthless, they are seen as assertive, but when females are, they are seen as aggressive."

Meanwhile, a survey has found that men believe women have the upper hand. In the research, for the DMAX TV channel, more than half the men interviewed said they have lost their role in a society which is turning them into "waxed and coiffed metrosexuals".

 

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Beauty And The Beast Within

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Self defense trainer Melissa Soalt sleeps with a knife under her pillow and claims that every woman is a natural born killer. You wanna make something of it?

I am on the ground fighting like a scrappy bitch. The heel of my right foot is en route to my attacker's head. "You fucking little whore," he spews as he lunges for my throat, then-WHOMP! - I land a stunning kick that sends him flying back and leaves me aching for more.

It was my first time defending myself, and it was love at first blow.

For me, "the dark side" is a place I call home-quite literally. At my house, an overnight guest might find a push dagger under her pillow in lieu of chocolates, and discover books on Close Quarters Combat and Death Point Striking sharing coveted bathroom space with Oprah's O Magazine and Ms. and Bon Appetite.

For the past eighteen years, under the name Dr. Ruthless, I've been teaching women to defend themselves from attack. Not only do I preach the gospel of self defense and whack padded guys' groins-two things that are generally applauded in my line of work-but I actually savor the feeling of landing the first telling blow, my body refashioning itself into a heat-seeking missile in search of my target. I know this "beast girl" part of myself intimately, and I could no more disown her than I could amputate a limb.

But in spite of Xena, Laura Croft and a culture gone warrior-chic, my enthusiasm for going animal, for teaching women how to shed their civilized skin and morph their bodies into weapons of destruction, makes some folks nervous.

Maybe it's the glint in my eye, but when I exalt in my killer instinct or share choice stories-like the one about the woman who sliced her rapist's face with a razor from her purse; or the cocktail waitress who nailed her attacker's foot to freshly laid tar with her stiletto heel; or my student who cracked her attacker's head against the bumper of her car then made pulp out of his groin; or when I gush about my Afghani knife and confess that at night you might find me in the darkness slicing the air as if across a man's forearm and neck-I am often flashed a look of disdain. T

he concern is that I have abandoned Venus for Mars; that embracing the hardness of warriorhood represents a radical departure from the softness of femininity. But I disagree. After all, what could be more natural, more in tune with Mother Nature than knowing how to bash back and not become prey? The way I see it, the killer instinct is as essential to survival as the maternal instinct.