Who serves coffee?

By Mariana Conde

When I was working abroad, in a place where it was not only wrong but dangerous to show any hint of inequality, I had a meeting full of big egos but similar ranks among which I was the only woman. The other Latin American at the table (Brazilian, if you want to know), a newcomer to the Anglo-Saxon work culture, bluntly said: "Mariana, aren't you going to serve the coffee? The poor Englishmen looked purple and some of them quickly got up to circulate cups and another one to pass the sugar. I did not move, I resisted a little voice in the background, weaker and weaker, that urged me to be kind and helpful. Thinking back on that episode, I wonder how it would have unfolded if that boardroom had been in Brazil, or Mexico....

I always prided myself on the fact that at my parents' house things were pretty even in terms of gender. I was given the same permissions as my brothers, there were irrational expectations about my school performance and my future; it was unquestionable that I would study, at least, a career. If I came to my father with the story that JM hit me and girls are not even touched with the petal of a rose, his first question was: who started it? The punishment was not my brother because he was a boy, but the one who had given the first slap, sometimes me.

All three of us were given driving privileges at about the same age, travel opportunities with friends and responsibilities at home.