grammatical gender

In Portuguese, all nouns are either masculine or feminine. In English, they're not. Which leaves me very confused. For example, when one big company owns several small companies, the big company is referred to as the parent company and the small companies are sister companies to one another. So how am I supposed to tell whether the parent company is the mom or the dad in the family? For example, Olive Garden and Red Lobster are sister companies (I'm not sure why they're called sister companies and not brother companies... Red Lobster is obviously a very masculine name, it should be a brother not a sister) owned by Darden Restaurants. Victoria's Secret (Vicki) and Bath & Body Works (B.B.) are also sister companies (it is pretty obvious here that Vicky and B.B. are girls) owned by Limited Brands. So when Vicki is talking on the phone with her sister B.B., do they refer to L.B. as mom or dad?