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The notion of gender symbolism, considered as social expectations of how men or women should behave, and which jobs should they have, allows our understanding about how they play professional roles in society today. The aim of this paper is to identify the ideals of the executive profession in women narratives. We interviewed 64 female executives at organizations in seven different capitals - Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Porto Alegre, Salvador, Vitoria, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The data were analyzed by means of Critical Discourse Analysis, enabling identification of meanings about the executive work that were supposedly gender neutral, as well as associated with femininity (in) competence of women considering the executive work. Even skills associated with femininity, such as negotiation skills and organization, flexibility and caution are shown as ambivalent, sometimes in favor of women occupying management positions, sometimes considering them as less suitable for the executive work when compared to men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]