Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all in top corporate positions in Brazil?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21988
• Author: Alfredo Behrens,Paula Bastos
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019

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Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all in top

corporate positions in Brazil?

Paula Bastos

1

| Alfredo Behrens

2

1

Business consultant, New York, US

2

Mestrado da Fundação Instituto de

Administração (FIA) Business School,

São Paulo, Brazil

Correspondence

Paula Bastos, 395 South End Ave, New York,

NY 10280 USA.

Email: paulafreirebastos@gmail.com

This article seeks to bring to light the discriminatory issues in Brazilian corporations through the

analysis of respondents’projections to ambiguous pictures. The respondents are top managers

from a Brazilian company and MBA students from a Brazilian business school who have the

power to promote people and make career path decisions. The survey shows that, in spite of

improvements related to female financial independence, influence and leadership power in cor-

porations, there is still a lot to be done to give women and Afro-descendants the same types of

opportunities as white men. Women are perceived as running the show from the sidelines, if at

all. The responses also suggest that women are required to fit in a male dominated environment,

whether regarding their attire or the decoration of the workplace. White males are seen as hav-

ing the fastest career path, white women as having a slower one and black men as having the

slowest of all three. The dilemma for multinationals settling in Brazil is to pursue their headquar-

ters’equal opportunity policies or blend into local practices, which would not be acceptable

under their home directives. Similarly, it is the same for Brazilian corporations expanding abroad.

KEYWORDS

Afro-descendants, career, discrimination, leadership, thematic apperception test, women

1|INTRODUCTION

This research intends to describe the type and intensity of discrimina-

tion against women and Afro-descendants in Brazil by identifying the

unconscious reactions, which frame the views held by corporate mid-

to high-level managers. The method is innovative and the sample is

small; however,because the sample was drawn froma corporation pro-

ducing goods forwomen, and from respondents withmuch higher than

the average levelof education, these resultsoffer a lot to think about.

According to census data (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Esta-

tística, n.d.), from1960 to 2011, the percentage of women in the eco-

nomically active population more than doubled from 17.9% to 46.1%.

While still only representing 27% in senior management positions and

3% in CEO positions(Grant Thornton IBR, 2012). Whilst half theBrazil-

ian populationdeclares itself non-white, thereare no non-white individ-

uals leading a largenational or foreign-owned Brazilianoperation.

The reasons for the underrepresentation of females and Afro-

descendants in business leadership roles are complex and combine

multiple factors. A dominant white-male-defined structure of work

and career success in the organizational environment hinders the

advancement of women and Afro-descendants in Brazil.

Women have always had more varied roles such as taking care of

their family, house, career, and a broader concept of success that

encompasses these multiple roles (Bilimoria, Hopkins, & O’Neil, 2008).

Women also face low self-confidence and a lack of skills to negotiate

for themselves compared to men, as well as discrimination in subtle

ways (Beck, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c).

Regarding this last factor, Beck (2011a, 2011b, 2011c) also

highlighted that boards have traditionally been made up of white

middle-aged males of similar backgrounds who are comfortable with

each other and recruit new colleagues in their own likeness. This

behavior keeps women out of the game and causes them to take on a

masculine style of leadership as well as other male behaviors so that

they can have a fighting chance of getting to the top (Ibarra, 2013).

Schein (2007) shows that the “think manager—think male”atti-

tude persists in many countries. Over the last three decades of stud-

ies, she found that corporate males in the United States continue to

view women as being less qualified than men for managerial positions.

The objective of this article is to dive into the discriminatory part

of the issue. Through a survey held with middle and top managers in a

Brazilian company and MBA students from a leading Brazilian busi-

ness school, this article analyzes the intensity of prejudice against

DOI: 10.1002/tie.21988

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev. 2019;61:119–122. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 119