I heard an interesting comment from one of the ladies in my audience after one of my motivational talks this week. She claims that women are more into self help and personal improvement than men are. I wonder if this is really true especially given the case that my motivational presentation, The Life Champion In You, as well as the accompanying book and audio program can be classified in the self help or personal improvement category.
Overall, except for the specialized audiences like HR and Administrative Professionals which are largely female, most of my talks have been roughly equal numbers of men and women. When it comes to those who buy my books and CDs after my talks, I’m guessing that the ratio is about even as well so far.
We do know that according to book industry figures, more women than men in the market buy books. But this might be skewed somehow since there seems to be more titles geared specifically for women than men. Maybe the industry is onto something here then. Is this an indication that it is established that women are the primary consumers of books, especially in self help?
As a speaker, I don’t really care whether more women or men are into self help since I just want to be able to help people, no matter who they are. However, one thing I did notice during my talks is that women tend to laugh more. This is actually an observation that many speakers have made. Men tend to be more reserved when audience members, even uptight at times, especially in corporate settings.
Quite often, men will check up on whether the big boss in the audience is having a good time or not. If the big boss is laughing, the other men will join in. However, if the boss is not laughing, the other men will often keep their laughter inside. It almost seems that men require permission to laugh where the women don’t really care.
Women seem to laugh regardless of whether the boss is having a good time or not. Therefore, whenever I got more women in the audience than men, I can almost predict that the audience in general will have a really good time. This will often result in more book and CD sales at the end of my events.
So I don’t really know for sure if women are more into self help and personal improvement than men are but I do know that the more women in my audiences, the better the outcomes seem to be.
If you have any comments on this, feel free to leave them on my blog or Facebook fan page.
Interesting question. As a woman, I really don’t think gender is the deciding factor when it comes to personal development. I think it has more to do with the person in general.
I don’t know…I categorize those who seek personal development into two categories – those who truly use it to improve and those who use it to find the magic pill or easy answer. That may be a bit cynical but with so many people never reaching their full potential I haven’t reached another conclusion yet.
Thanks for such an interesting questions to ponder.