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Dutch women change their LinkedIn name to Peter to highlight inequality

Publicly traded companies in the Netherlands count more CEOs named Peter than CEOs who are women. To draw attention to that lack of representation in senior leadership roles, WOMEN Inc and BrandedU are calling on women to change their LinkedIn name to Peter from 24–28 January 2022.

Women aren't just under-represented as CEOs. As BrandedU points out, less than a quarter of professors at Dutch universities are women, and females make up just 14% of general managers at the country's 100 largest companies.

Yeliz-Cicek

Yeliz Çiçek, Editor in Chief of Vogue Nederland, is one of hundreds of women who temporarily changed their name to Peter

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Our workforce should reflect society as a whole, but you can't be what you can't see. Without gender parity in leadership positions, it's a struggle for women in lower and middle management to ascend to executive roles. 

As signaled by WOMEN Inc and BrandU's campaign, that lack of equality in top decision-making roles means women have less power and less influence on how our economy and society are shaped. 

Is your brand committed to gender parity in every layer of your organization? Besides being a moral imperative, it might be good for your bottom line, too — research published in 2020 found that having a female CEO increased a company's market value by 5 percent.