The present study approaches succession process in family firms focusing women exclusion from this process. This is an exploratory and descriptive multicase study in family firms located in the State of Goiás, Brazil, carried out through the means of semi-structured interviews with workers from managerial and operational levels and analyzed with the application of the graphical discourse technique by Lane (1985). The results show that, due to Brazilian culture and family firms' features, women are excluded from the succession process in family firms in two ways: the promotion of women to managerial jobs is not taken into consideration since the beginning of the process, or the possibility is taken into consideration at first but it is rejected later on. In the organizations investigated it was found a low number of directors and managers of feminine gender, and it should be pointed out that these managerial positions taken by women are related to functions considered "feminine".
exclusion; organization; family firms