Gender Roles In Business Meetings In Brazil

Discrimination comes on various ways, it is either based on race, religion or even the type of gender an individual has. But for the scope of this paper, we are only going to consider gender’s role in business meetings in Brazil – a country wherein gender is greatly differentiated as compared to the United States. Americans even way before made an effort to ignore gender differences in work place either through legislation or by social norms.
This only means that, even if you are a woman or a man, there is an equal chance for you to be promoted, have equal freedom to express yourself and have equal opportunity to assume higher positions in the company. Americans do not relate gender to the potential performance of an individual. On the other hand, Brazilians seems to become so sensitive when it comes to considering the type of gender an individual has before giving the said person respect and/or accept his/her authority.
Generally, most of the Brazilians treat their men as superior and knowledgeable as compared to Brazilian women. Meaning, Brazilian men has always been given priority in every gender role in the Brazilian society. In the line of business, Brazilian women accept that fact that Brazilian men will always have the higher positions in the company and oftentimes, what is being left for women is the position of the secretary or any other lower corporate position.

It is clear that this is already a kind of gender discrimination- depriving women to assume higher positions in a company despite her performance and skills in handling the said position. In business meetings, Brazilian women are being expected to wear attires that will emphasize their femininity and this could be achieved through the design of the attire as well as using make-up to get the attention of Brazilian men (Victor, 2006).
This is very much different in the context of American culture since American women has a more formal design of attire regardless the level of its femininity as compared with that of the Brazilian women. It would be also advisable for Brazilian women to wear skirts and high heals in order to high light their femininity which Brazilian men always wanted to see to the former. Moreover, during a meeting, women are being heard less as compared to men. Opinions of a Brazilian man have a premium over the opinions of Brazilian women even if the opinion of the latter is more feasible.
In other words, between the words of a Brazilian man and a Brazilian woman, it is the word of the former which will be heard by the board or the CEO even if the word of the latter is more feasible and realistic as compared to the words of a Brazilian man. On the other hand, in the American culture, it is the quality of the proposal or opinion that serves to be the basis of recognition and not the gender since, as what I have already said a while ago, American men and women have equal chances of being recognize the have the same sets of rights.
To some degree, we could say that, Americans are more productive and efficient as compared to Brazilians since the former base their judgment on the output not on the gender. These are the reasons why multinational companies, when making business deal with Brazilians, must send a male representative than with a female in order to have a greater chance of closing the deal. Brazilian men do not want the feeling of being overpowered by women regardless of its origin and nationality.
It was a shame on their part to be lectured by women or was not able to solve a company problem until such female representative from other international branch came. With the patriarchal society Brazilian has, it would be very hard on the part of the Brazilian women to oppose this said kind of social structure and same goes to American women who used to work in Brazil (DeBiaggi, 2001). Actually, it is not only in Brazil where this kind of discrimination takes place, other Latin American countries also exhibit this kind of social condition where women are being treated as next to men.
They never experience equal right on their home, school and even offices. Moreover, the situation becomes worse due to the lax policies of the Brazilian government to address the said kind of discrimination from their women (United Nation, 2003).