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

Abstract

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 corporations, 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 having 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 headquarters' 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.