Rachel Elnaugh and Gendergate

When it comes to blogging it’s a wonderful tool for expressing your opinion and sharing your expertise and nothing shows that more than what’s taking place on Rachel Elnaugh’s blog. The mistake was generalisation – making a sweeping statement about a whole population.  You know the kind of thing….

women always…..

men never…..

black people always….

white people never….

And the only question you have to ask is…. what ALL women always…. which of course instantly makes the statement sound absurd because you can never talk for all women! Its a simple but powerful error to make when you are putting anything into print – whether it’s in a newspaper or on your blog -  because there’s always someone out there with an opinion on it and people love to pounce.

(people love to pounce… a generalisation for you – what ALL people love to pounce… of course not!)

So the gendergate surfaced when former Dragon’s Den star and business personality Rachel Elnaugh made a statement that female enterpreneurs are more “emotionally attached” to their business than men. Rachel based her comment on research she carried out through profile testing on her site but unless you interviewed ALL men and ALL women (which of course is impossible) that research will never truly be accurate.

Here is what Rachel said on her posted titled Sexist Comment …..

Well, you may know that I have an Entrepreneurial Profile Test on my website and having just run an analysis of c3,000 entrepreneurs profiled so far, here are the results:

54% of men profile as having strong money/material drivers vs 45% having predominantly emotional drivers, whereas only 34% of women have strong money drivers vs 65% having strong emotional drivers.

Source http://racheleelnaugh.blogspot.com

A better statement (in my opinion) would have been….

“I’ve profiled around 3,000 entrepreneurs to date and have found a definite difference in the strong monetary and emotional drivers that women have towards their business compared to men

…. [publish results]….

Based on that evidence one could generalise that women entrepreneurs are more emotionally attached to their business than men but we’d have to do alot more research to come to that conclusion”

[how safe and sitting on the fence is that???!!!..... ]

Or of course you can also say that “in my opinion” – because that really is all it can be – your own opinion and people may or may not agree with it. As soon as you make a statement that “ALL” of anybody does something you open yourself to those who agree, and those who most passionately don’t!

What started Rachel off on this path is a comment by my man (I love him) Theo Paphitis. He’s lively, fun and I love the way he likes to give struggling entrepreneurs a chance when they mess up on Dragon’s Den! He gets them to calm down and start again rather than just writing them off because they messed up their pitch. Anyway…. he made a comment about women’s brains turning to mush when they are pregnant…. what ALL women Theo…???

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2008/06/03/ftdragons103.xml&DCMP=ILC-traffdrv07053100

So blogging tip one is never generalise (what NEVER….?…… YES!)

And within this whole event lies blogging tip two…. contraversy works! So don’t listen to blogging tip number one

In conclusion then I think I have pretty much demonstrated that when it comes to blogging there really are no rules! You do what works for you and don’t let an “expert” like me tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing with your business and your blog.

YOU are the expert in your business whether you want to believe that or not.

Invent your own rules (just avoid personal attacks because that truly isn’t nice – in my opinion!)

If you are a mushy brained emotionally attached women looking to make sense of how to get known online using blogs and podcasts make sure you join me on my blogging and podcasting teleseminar/webinar taking place July 10th. I have a whole new membership planned helping people establish their system and make money online

http://www.inspirationalguidance.com/onlinebusinessbuilding

Diane

P.S. I remember catching a program on 7 year olds… don’t recall the name now but a group of girls and boys. They were asked to choose blocks with words like “love” “honesty” “rich” “popular” etc and discard them until they were left with their most important word. They each did this in a room alone (not with the other kids around them)

All boys (with the exception of one) discarded all the blocks until the only one left was ”rich”… ALL girls (that is every single one of them) had trouble choosing one block because they found being ”honest” and “loving” of equal importance! The boy who didn’t pick “rich” choose the same blocks as the girls. It was a very eye opening program about gender difference in kids as young as 7 and I flicked on to it so had no idea what it was called or what channel I was on.

It does (sort of) lean towards Rachel’s findings when it comes to the money and emotions debate in women and men.

P.P.S.

Rachel has a masterclass coming up to help you with your business. The best people to learn from (IMHO) are the people who mess up but keep going. That’s why I wrote about my internet marketing mistakes, because i learnt from them and by teaching them it means you can avoid them.

http://www.rachelelnaugh.com/masterclasses