After realizing that having only one woman on their board of directors looks bad, a Luxembourg company has decided to make her appear enormous in all external communication and marketing.
The move is part of the company’s efforts to improve the public perception of their efforts to strive for equal representation, one shared by many firms in the Grand Duchy.
“For years, we actually had no female directors and would sometimes face criticism for this lack, often from our clients themselves,” explains CEO Marcus Jorgensen. “We decided real measures needed to be taken, so we recruited Helena Brück from a competitor to join our board, so we could be like, hey, look, a woman.”
However, their dedication to the promotion of gender equality proved insufficient for some people, he says.
“Whenever gender and equality and things like that were discussed, or whenever women’s month came around, we’d go into promotional beast mode and put Helena everywhere – in LinkedIn content, in sponsored articles, in interviews.”
However, observers pointed out that the other eight members of the board were still men. That’s when the company decided to get serious.
They hired a consultant who said that if they were really committed to expanding women’s roles and influence in the company, they could simply make Brück appear larger.
“It was really quite cheap and painless for us,” Jorgensen said. “We didn’t even have to take new photos of the board. My nephew agreed to do all the photoshopping for us. He’s 15 years old. Talented kid. Plays too many video games, but they’re all like that.”
After a short meeting with the communications team, the board decided to make Brück appear approximately 2.5 times her normal height and eight times her normal weight, resulting in what the company proudly calls “total physical, spacial, and symbolic equality” with the men on the board.
“We are proud to announce that as of today, half of the space on our board of directors is taken up by women,” Jorgensen said on Wednesday in a LinkedIn post showing off the company’s new website, social media photos, and promotional material. “Well, a single woman, but at her size, she could easily crush and devour all the men.”
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Originally published by RTL Today
