The Battle for Female Talent in Brazil - Center for Work-Life Policy

the Maternity Penalty
In July 2010, Brazil’s Congress extended paid
maternity leave to six months for both public
and private sector employees. This more
robust policy is a double-edged sword. As well
as helping working mothers, the new law puts
women in a “fragile situation,” says Sodexo
Brazil’s executive president Satya Menard. “We
have women who are afraid to tell their boss
that they’re pregnant because they’re very
insecure about how the boss will react.”
A particularly negative element of the
Brazilian labor code is that a woman out on
maternity leave cannot work part-time for
her regular employer, making it difficult to
participate or even stay plugged in to what’s
happening at the office. According to some of
the women we interviewed, this “out of sight,
out of mind” situation means that a woman
who takes the full six months may find when
she returns that her substitute may have
supplanted her, or her responsibilities may
have been diminished.“The risk of being
dismissed is high, because the law does not
guarantee that she will keep the job,” warns
Ieda Novais, corporate director of consulting
firm BDO Brazil.
Sonia ran head-on into these challenges
when her annual contract with her employer
came up for renewal one month into her
maternity leave. Her new contract stipulated
that her employer could fire her at any time
without paying severance. When she objected,
she was told that everyone was being asked
to sign similarly open-ended contracts. “I
was in a vulnerable position, because I had a
one-month-old baby and needed the money. I
couldn’t take any risks, so I signed.”
After she signed, she discovered that
none of her male colleagues had received
that kind of contract. “I felt really discriminated
against. Because I was a new mother, they
took advantage of my vulnerability to give me
something that in a more normal phase of my
life I would never have signed.” Her baby is
now almost a year old and “so far, so good—
they haven’t revoked my contract,” Sonia says.
“But every month I wonder, am I going to keep
my job or will I be fired tomorrow?”
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the Lure of the Public Sector
More than in any of the other countries in
our large emerging markets study, Brazil’s
public sector offers stiff competition to private
sector companies (both multinational and
local).
Some 65 percent of educated Brazilian
women describe the public sector as very
desirable to work in, head and shoulders
above female respondents in China (57%),
India (51%) and even the UAE (48%). In
Figure 3.4:
Public sector very desirable to work for
80 80 80 80 80
70 70 70 70 70
65%
60 60 60 60 60
50 50 50 50 50
40 40 40 40 40
30 30 30 30 30
20 20 20 20 20
10 10 10 10 10
32%
51%
57%
48%
0 0 0 0 0
Brazil Brazil Brazil Brazil Brazil Russia India India India India India China UAE UAE UAE UAE UAE
Brazil Russia India China uAE
contrast, only 39 percent of educated Brazilian
women see U.S.-based multinationals as very
desirable, while 49 percent say the same for
local Brazilian companies.
Their reasons have little to do with power,
prestige, interesting projects or advancement
and everything to do with benefits, job security
and work-life balance. When we delved
into the factors that make the public sector
attractive to Brazilian women, we discovered
the following attributes: 79 percent of our
female respondents opted for job security, 64
percent pinpointed family-friendly benefits,
and 60 percent cited paid time off. The
emphasis on job security is not surprising in
an economy that not long ago experienced
triple-digit inflation and has a history of booms
and busts. Salaries may not be as hefty as in
the private sector, but thanks to one of the
world’s most generous pension systems,
employees can retire at their full salary and
receive the same pay-scale increases as their
successors.