My name is Peter
How a simple name change on LinkedIn got everyone talking about gender inequality.
Gender inequality is still a major challenge in the Netherlands. Only 5% of all CEOs are women and gender stereotyping is still a massive barrier. We discovered the shocking statistic that at all the listed companies in the Netherlands there are actually more CEOs named Peter than female CEOs. That is why two women’s rights organisations, WOMEN Inc and BrandedU, launched: ‘My name is Peter’.
My name is Peter is an awareness campaign on LinkedIn that asked women to change their name to ‘Peter’, to increase their chances of becoming CEO. With the help of multiple influential women and a toolkit, we launched the campaign. These women – including football player Rocky Hehakaija and the editor-in-chief of Vogue, Yeliz Cicek – all changed their LinkedIn names to Peter for one week and asked others to do the same. Thousands of women followed and changed their names to Peter, spreading awareness at the companies where they work and beyond. LinkedIn’s algorithm did the rest, immediately making the subject trending.
The result
My name is Peter received global attention. Several women in parliament endorsed our initiative, sparking a national discussion. Even men joined in by changing their names to Petra – the feminine form of Peter – in solidarity with women. One of them was Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands. The campaign reached over 50% of the Dutch population (9+ million reach in the Netherlands alone). We garnered 93 million media impressions with zero media budget. One simple name change got the public talking and brought some much-needed attention to the gender disparity between men and women.