BMA Women

Since BMA was founded, we have been proud to have a very significant number of women among our lawyers and other professionals, holding positions at all levels. We are one of the law firms in Brazilian with the largest number of women partners – 39%. Taking our entire staff into account, we women are a majority of 53%.

Through our program BMA Mulher (BMA Women), we support all our women in their professional development, by implementing practical actions and offering a forum for discussion of careers and gender parity. We went a step further in 2020, and signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles – WEP sponsored by UN Women. The WEP now guide the way we work and inspire us to daily action.

Since March is the month to celebrate women, we have held a variety of events, kicking off with our traditional roundtable meeting, held digitally at the end of February.

Why “roundtable”? Because a round table means that the conversation is among equals, without hierarchy. In practice, it means that we can talk about any subject, without restriction, in a welcoming environment that promotes exchanges.

Next we had a series of activities designed to showcase of our team of women, including, in addition to this issue of BMA Review, all March’s episodes of DNA BMA, our podcast, with an all women cast.

On March 24th we organized an event with three inspiring in-house counsel, Isabela Maciel de Sá (Abbott Laboratories), Ianda Lopes (GE), and Fabiana Siviero (99 Tech and a BMA alumna), who talked about gender barriers in legal careers, unconscious biases, and affirmative actions to reduce these obstacles. Our guests did more than talk: they showed us how we can act! The video is available on our YouTube channel, #somosbma.

We had more good news to bring the month to a close. BMA was recognized by Análise Mulher, published by the Brazilian legal directory Análise Advocacia, as the second full service law firm with the largest number of women lawyers ranked in the survey: 30 lawyers in 29 practice areas and 30 sectors of the economy. And our partner Barbara Rosenberg was named the most admired woman lawyer in the country among full service law firms.

This kind of recognition is not earned overnight. It reflects a culture that has internalized the value of women and acts on it every day, because the fight for gender equality is an on-going process. It involves everyone all year round, not just on March 8th.