HR2 Human Rights in Human Resources 'Equality

HR2 Human rights in human resources 'Equality is a juridical principle. Difference is an existential principle which concerns the modes of being human, the peculiarity of one's own experiences, goals, possibilities, and one's sense of existence in a given situation and the situations one wants to create for oneself. The difference between woman and man is the basic difference of humankind [. .] Equality is what is offered as legal rights to colonized people.

And what is imposed on them as culture.' Carla Lonzi's (1970) early insights into the shift in global situations in the workplace, where transformations in the international economy would leave workers wide open to inexplicable cultural differences in rights and responsibilities to their companies. The foregoing essay looks at the interchange of corporate workday experiences and the emergent human rights as human resources in the South American context.

Based on Brazilian organizational culture, the case study addresses the distinctions that arise in environments like Brazil, where citizen-workers express consistent belief that they 'stand apart' in terms of cultural, linguistic and legal history. If Brazilian identity enforces 'difference' as a salient interpretation of socio-political consciousness, then 'equity' is not comparable to cultural knowledge of national identity to one's neighbors.

Indeed, Brazil's unique history has often placed its interests as a national community in a scope of possibilities, as a country with radical contradiction in the construction and adherence of equitable distribution and equality in legal rights (Jaquette, 2009). Once a Portuguese colony Brazil's legal infrastructure is decisively 'Western,' yet its application has been engendered with the specificity of classist, racist and sexist violence in a nation transformed under dictatorship and human rights activism.

The impact of the international human rights scene on Brazil, and that society's contribution to the formation of its contemporary legislation is indicative of that nation's confluence of democratic forms and close attention to the mechanism of legislative policy (Jaquette, 2009). Outgrowths of during the period of democratization in South America in the late 1980s to 1990s, Brazil, saw institutional transformation in via officially sanctioned feminist agendas in the establishment of dedicated government oversight, and legislative ratification of women's rights as Brazilian rights.

So too, the country was one of the most active participants aside from neighboring Argentina and Chile to redefinition of some of the most important international human rights convention legislation, including the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The legal (not to mention psychological) affect that this process had on Brazil's population is seen through exercise of those mechanisms to this date.

When grassroots responses to discriminatory actions moved to quasi-official NGO network collaboration, the expansion of populist interest and designated governmental activities produced the kind of energy and seriousness pertinent to proliferation of children's rights, women's rights, worker's rights and a host of others in everyday practice. Amidst such progressive thought, Sexism in the traditional sense still finds fecund ground. The hyper-sexualized Carnival is for many Brazilians what it means to 'be' Brazilian. The excessive use of sex in this case, operates as an inversion to all things traditional.

Feminists argue that the presence of Carnival in Brazil counters male dominance, only for an instance, but agree that the feminized ritual turns the world upside down for the best. Potency in radical difference rejects submissive female sexual positions; and with it old models of 'doing business.' In spite of Carnival's momentary dismantling of patriarchy, Brazil's enormous commercial investment in advertising media dedicated to scantily clad supermodels like Gisele finds normative presence after the party is over, consolidating objectification (Enloe, 1990).

What constitutes sexual harassment in Brazilian society? Despite the high awareness of patriarchal and hierarchical subordination of women to men within Brazilian law, cultural norms still entitle men to make sexual advances at will. Although Brazilian women perceive sexual advances to be entirely normal, when in doubt, few laws strictly stating prohibition of 'sexual harassment' exist. Sexual harassment, then, is not synonymous with discrimination. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the Brazilian workplace offers illustration of the disparity between 'discrimination' and 'sexual harassment,' in Table 1.

Table 1 Strengths CEDAW law enactment High Awareness of rights against discrimination Dedicated government offices to protection of rights NGO advocacy networks Strong culture of women as actors Weaknesses Low confidence expressed by women in response to sexual harassment Lack of respective laws defining the issue as misconduct Opportunities Active political arena fosters high level changes in response to legal/psychological/social circumstances Global business culture Threats Incompatibility with international expectations that sexual harassment is an illegal act Male culture that is strict in enforcement of dominance through sexual misconduct, even while supporting worker's rights extensively Table 1.

SWOT Analysis of sexual harassment in the Brazilian workplace Comparative analysis with labor laws in the United States offers insight into national disparities in public awareness about sexual harassment as an act of illegal misconduct, as it is stated in international law. The uncanny misplacement of sexual harassment, in a country that is known for thorough going attention to human rights articulations, is largely the result of 'material' rather than ethical or social effects (Jaquette, 2009). Laws on discrimination are not always enforced in Brazil, as elsewhere, due to high unemployment.

Workers simply fear risk. On the psychological front, Brazilian women who find themselves traumatized will often not seek support from professional networks or in the community for fear that damage to reputation may take place. Assumed emotional 'guilt' over lack of control over circumstances on the job is unfortunately the source of self-blame for many women. Subordination to sexual harassment as a form of 'exchange' is cited as typical.