Brazil pushes women into corporate boardrooms and C‑Level roles

In Brazil, 57% of companies with a board have no women serving, and women occupy only 17% of board seats, according to the Insper Gender Studies Center. To address this gap, the civil‑society organization Pacto de Promoção da Equidade Racial launched the second edition of the Pacto Transforma programme, selecting 30 female executives for a 14‑month training that includes an executive MBA, English instruction, mentorship, and modules on finance, AI governance, digital transformation and geopolitics. The programme is fully funded, costing about R$7,000 per participant.

Separately, French pharmaceutical firm Pierre Fabre, operating in Brazil for more than three decades, reports that 63% of its executive committee and 62% of its overall workforce are women. The company applies gender‑balanced filters in salary reviews, promotion decisions and hiring, ensuring that job candidate lists contain at least one man and one woman. These measures aim to prevent the high post‑maternity dismissals that affect hundreds of thousands of Brazilian women each year.