BASailor said:
Corporate world is not the real world, just a small and dirty world.
If you don't understand the way people use to be polite and kind in some country, please try to understand first. A compliment is not a crime against women.
Is it polite, kind or a compliment for a grown man to say to a teenager "che nena, que hermosa eres, ven y sentarte en mi regazo, tengo un premio para vos."
Or for guys to roll down the window of the car sitting in traffic, as my wife and I walk long the sidewalk, and the guys start shouting all kinds of sexual comments at her. Or crossing 9 de Julio and an idiot taxi driver honking his horn and hanging out the window, shouting all kinds of crap at her.
Neither my wife nor my sister-in-law dress in a revealing manner. In fact, my wife has started to dress as plainly as she can to avoid this as much as possible - and it doesn't seem to make a great difference.
That kind of stuff happens at least a few times a week.
My poor sister-in-law is groped on the bus she takes from school (I drive her in the mornings) every freaking day.
Women are hired here in some places based on their looks and/or age (I've seen signs here sometimes "wanted: young [sometimes an actual age range] beautiful woman with great body wanted for position X" in some places). While I can understand that some specialized jobs (models come to mind immediately) might require things like that, putting that kind of thing on clerks and even waitresses is buying into the machismo that men like to look at pretty women, even when just buying things, and business will do better if they bow to that pressure.
In perhaps the higher echelons of society here women are treated somewhat equally. There is certainly much more ability to flirt and not worry about sexual harassment lawsuits in the office (on both sides, male or female - which I think can be a good thing. I think the US has gone way too far in that,as it does in many things) and women do indeed make it to high positions. I rented my house in Pilar from a women who was a vice president at IBM here, for example. Of course, she was relatively young, beautiful, with a killer body...
But as most things here, get away from the top of society and it's extremely flavored by machismo.
I like South America for the lack of pressure that exists between men and women here, to an extent. It's one thing that the US, to me, seems to be way too far in the other direction.
One nice thing for foreigner males who come here - if you treat a woman with respect, you are more likely to gain her confidence and desire to be with you, than you are if you treat her like most of her countrymen do. And the further you get away from the upper echelons of society, the greater that difference is.
