“Petrobras is a very successful company, completely male-dominated,” Maria das Graças Silva Foster told the FT’s Women at the Top Conference in November 2011. “But things are changing and it’s just question of time.”
A question of just two months, in fact. On Monday, the Brazilian company’s gas and energy director was named as the next chief executive of, in the FT’s words, “arguably Latin America’s most important company”.
Her promotion will also make her, by a long shot, the most prominent businesswoman in Latin America, and a symbol of the diversity policy of Brazil’s first woman president Dilma Rousseff – who used to chair Petrobras and is said to be close to Ms Graças Foster. The president appears to be lining up another Brazilian businesswoman - Luiza Helena Trajano Inácio Rodrigues, who heads the retailer Magazine Luiza – to become a minister for small business. But the number of top female CEOs in Brazil still looks low compared with, say, India or China.
