Smurfs believe inequality
Driven by a questioning of why the “glass ceiling” or “bamboo ceiling” exists in a certain group’s professional career, I carried out an analysis of male and female directors as well as the ethnic groups of the board members in the largest multinational corporations in Europe.
In this project, I use the blue color from the classic Smurf cartoon character to represent the core of power — a group that is hard to break into from the outside, sharing only one color, and where “males are central, females are peripheral” ideology implanted.
Finding: In Fortune’s Global 500 list of the European top 25 largest multinational corporations, there are 306 board members: 74% are male and 26% are female. If the person is mixed-race I put him or her into the coloured group, though this still makes the non-white category very low. In total, there are 3 Asian males and 6 Asian females, 2 black females and 2 other non-white male directors in the 25 corporations. Altogether the non-white group takes 4% in the total of the 306 directors.
Left: 306 Board of directors, 2018 Pigment prints on Hahnemühle Fine Art Photo Rag
Right: 306 Board of directors, 2018 Acrylic painting on canvas board
Installation of "Smurfs believe inequality"