Yesterday we posted this piece on Sophie Turner, a Bedford-based business owner who believe there should be government support for women in a bid to enable them to become successful entrepreneurs. Support would apparently also be required to improve the confidence of females from early childhood onwards. I’ve emailed Ms Turner seeking a video discussion on entrepreneurialism, no response so far.

Nigel is one of our most prolific commenters, always making valuable points. Here is his response to the piece on Sophie Turner:

Sophie Turner answers the question herself. As she points out from age 6 there is a “gap” in the aquisition of ”confidence” and the set of behaviours that are generally required of the successful business person. Confidence indeed, risk taking, focus on work (the old saying look after the business for two or three years and then it looks after you) “gravitas” , sticking at it, competition, decisiveness, selling/persuasiveness and sometimes “bloody minded”. In fact many of the things in other contexts labelled “toxic masculinity”. In my entire adult life I have seen any number of national and local schemes to encourage female led business start ups and continuation (I have lived in northern conurbations which are solidly Labour in all that time and that have had even more local schemes that national ones). These have all basically been about giving taxpayers’ money to supposedly promising nascent female led businesses. If Sophie Turner’s figures are correct we can say for certain that 45 years of such things have been a complete waste.

So who to we blame for this lack of entrepreneurial skills and behaviors? Well of course if we look at children at age six, right up to leaving school in their late teens, it is women! Mothers, Child Carers, School Teachers, even social workers, children are effectively in the hands of women until at least their middle teens. How boys aquire these things so early can only be because all the women involved in their nurture, care, education and guidance in their formative years. Or maybe they are innate? Either way “the Patriarchy” can have had little part in this.

What always amazes me is that feminists in fact highlight so many of the reasons that women may not succeed, these days from qualities like “confidence” to childcare or “brain fog” in menopause, and then expect “support” (aka money or time off work) to people they have made abundantly clear are less likely to succeed. Sophie Turner in effect makes a good case for any reasonable investor to think a female led business start up is likely to be more about a charitable giving situation than a good investment. And of course this is the truth of it this will be yet another initiative where money is given to be considered nice and virtuous.

As Warren Farrell pointed out a couple of decades ago more productive would be teaching girls to adopt the behaviours of successful businessmen. Particularly if these are “innate” in boys and maybe they have to taught to girls. But then that would require teaching a set of behaviours labelled “toxic” by our “blobs”.

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