Recently, there was a bit of news on Instituto Ethos, a Brazilian-based think tank, on its study of participation of Afro-brazilians and women (and a few lines on indigenous people) executives in the largest 500 companies in Brazil.
The study non-surprisingly (or surprisingly if one believes the happy / integrated story of the Brazilian population), the statistics, despite improvement were alarmingly weak – not to say anything about indigenous people that merited but a few lines in the study.
Here are a few highlights:
+ Afro Brazilians or people of “mixed” background make up 51% of country’s population
+ Of the 500 business polled, only 5.3% of them were ran by Afro-brasilians
- this was an improvement from 3.5% (three years before)
- of Afro-brasilians in management positions and supervisory roles are 13.2% and 25.6% respectively
+ 93.3% of businesses have “white” directors (wording used in the document)
+ Black women in executive roles represent 0.5% of the total
+ In terms of women’s involvement:
- in executive positions women represent: 13.8% (from 11.5% in ’07)
Not sure what the US stats are but they have to be better than these. Here is the link to the report (sorry only in Portuguese): http://www1.ethos.org.br/EthosWeb/arquivo/0-A-eb4Perfil_2010.pdf
What to do? Well given the poor showing, there is much to do and anything will help. Minorities need to participate in business in order to further their cause, full-stop. There are many examples of this in the US economy, such as SEO – Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (http://www.seo-usa.org/About). An organization started by a Jewish man, Michael Osheowitz about in 1963. The organization among its many programmes has one, the career programme, focused on interning minorities in Wall Street. SEO was how I entered the business world; I will be eternally grateful. And there are more, and there needs to be more here in Brazil and in the rest of Latin America. I am reminded of it constantly as I go from meeting to meeting here in the Brig. Faria Lima avenue, the “Park Avenue” of Sao Paulo, and I am usually the darkest person in the room.
There is much to do for inequality, and thankfully there is not one single approach that will work. Everybody can contribute.
There is much to do for inequality, and thankfully there is not one single approach that will work. Everybody can contribute.
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