When women started to mean BUSINESS

'It's a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman or girl.' Up until recently, this fact was pretty much indisputable. Men were the business brains, the big bosses, the multi-millionaire, corporation heads of the world. Then women realised that perhaps they could break away from the kitchen sink and try their hand at it - and they were pretty good.
As women sneaked their way into Britain's rich list, something new was starting on the BBC... something that was going to emphasise just how much the tables had turned. The Apprentice.When Sir Alan Sugar pitted sixteen business-hungry men and women against each other it seemed inevitable which group would fall at the first hurdle.
Suddenly, though, the supposedly 'meek and mild' females were the ideas people, the business gumption and the charm needed for a well-oiled team. After Timothy Campbell emerged the victor of series one, series two was a fierce battle in an all-female finale.
These two women had achieved what had probably a decade ago seemed the impossible. They were now the women at the top of the game, the duo to beat eight eager, hard-talking young males to become Sugar's right-hand man.
When Michelle Dewberry walked away with the hotly-contested prize she had turned around a ill-fated future into a dream role as a high-flier at multi-billion-pound company, Amstrad.
She had also opened up the market for female entrepreneurs.
The Sunday Times 2006 Rich List revealed 22 women now revelled amongst the highest earners in the creative industries, with violinist, Vanessa Mae, and author, J.K Rowling, topping their categories.
Times were shifting with thousands of business-savvy women breaking through what for years had been a very sturdy glass ceiling. For many females the world was now at their feet.
Gone had the generation of stay-at-home mums, of secretaries and waitresses, of librarians and dinnerladies with the amount of females enrolling for university courses rising and quickly filtering into the market.
Just what had changed? How had this male-dominated world become infiltrated by these intruders?
The answer for this I believe, is a simple one. somewhere along the line the desire for success and the desire for money-hungry ruthlessness had overlapped. Elsewhere, however, things were changing. Along with the move of women into the market, a culture of men were becoming more effeminate, the birth of the metrosexual. What this new group didn't possess though, were the attributes that have truly made women feminine.
It has long been female wiles that have had men fall silly all over themselves, women that have possessed skills of diplomacy and reservedness, this combined with the opportunity for a fair education and equal rights has bred a climate primed for success.
Although they may be as ruthless as their male counterpart, a woman can go about their means much more subtly, if a woman could do the same job just as well (if not better) than the new 'metro-man' then why not?