There are more Dutch CEOs called “Peter” than female CEOs, survey finds

It seems that the Netherlands suffers from either an abundance of Peters, or an abundance of glass ceilings. Do you know more “Peters” than females? No? That’s strange. 

The Netherlands has performed rather poorly in terms of gender equality in the workplace according to a study performed by Equileap. In a survey of the Netherlands top 100 companies It was found that there were more CEOs named Peter (5) than there were female CEOs (4).

Equileap is an international research agency that is dedicated to gender equality in the business world. In their survey, they scored different countries using 19 different criteria.

These criteria include an examination of how allegations of sexual harassment are handled, how many female managers and employees a company has, the pay gap and how parental leave works.

Poor performance from the Netherlands

They survey found that the Dutch performed quite poorly in terms of gender equality, scoring the Dutch companies with an average of 37%.

Some of the reasons given for this score include the following:

  • None of the companies that Equileap surveyed had as many female workers as male workers on each level.
  • Gender balance was found to be particularly low at executive levels with an the average executive team consisting of only 14% women.
  • Most companies (88%) do not release information regarding the difference in salaries between male and female employees.

Yikes, looks like the Netherlands has some work to do. Is this something you have noticed before? Let us know in the comments below! 

Feature Image: Romain V/Unsplash 

Sarah O'Leary 🇮🇪


  1. Companies exist to make a profit in order to make money. Why would a company refuse to hire a woman if they thought she could do a better job than a man? Answer: They wouldn’t. Companies hire the best PERSON for the job. Only those who think women are inferior to men would demand a company hire a woman only because she is a woman.


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