Representativeness of Women in The Companies’ Hierarchy: Case study based on Women's Empowerment Principles

Abstract

The purpose of this work is analyzing how the practices recommended by the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), introduced in the discourse of sustainable development, promote the representativeness of women in the corporate world. As the WEPs’ slogan "Equality means business" is used to engage companies, it is analyzed how a metallurgical company with more than 5,000 workers makes the capitalist practices that contributed to deepen the sexual division of labor coexists with the objective of gender equality promoted by the UN agenda for sustainable development. The purpose of this case study, based on the content analysis of interviews and documents, aims to produce knowledge of reality through the relationships and practices enunciated to build an understanding about the status of the policy of empowerment of women adopted by the researched company. This study makes it possible to highlight that when the focus is the economic axis of the tripod of sustainable development, the consequence may be the perpetuation of inequality in gender relations.

Keywords

• relações de gênero hierarquizadas
• mulheres
• liderança
• women’s empowerment principles (weps)
• divisão sexual do trabalho