Women Photoshopped into tech exec group photo
The image, which ran with a GQ story last week, has since been removed.
- Named a Tech Media Trailblazer by the Consumer Technology Association in 2019, a winner of SPJ NorCal's Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2022 and has three times been a finalist in the LA Press Club's National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards.
This image of tech executives features two women who were Photoshopped in, a BuzzFeed report found.
Ryan Mac via TwitterWhat's one way to incorporate more women in tech? Just photoshop them in.
An image in GQ last week showed tech entrepreneurs during a visit to designer Brunello Cucinelli in Italy, but the two women were Photoshopped in. The image has since been removed from GQ's site and Cucinelli's Instagram. BuzzFeed News earlier reported the story.
The women who were added to the image were Sunrun CEO Lynn Jurich and Peek.com CEO Ruzwana Bashir. Both women tweeted about attending the trip, but they apparently weren't around when the photo was taken.
After some investigation, BuzzFeed found an all-male version of the photo on LinkedIn posted two weeks ago by Ferdinando de Bellis, a partner at a communications firm that's worked with Cucinelli.
"When we realized we didn't have a shot where all attendees were represented, we added in photos of two female CEOs taken during the weekend," a representative for Cucinelli said in a statement. "The photos were shared and approved with all the participants including the two women, Lynn Jurich and Ruzwana Bashir, before posting them on Instagram and they also shared the group photo on their own Instagram handles. We meant no harm or had any malicious intent in doing this and we are sorry."
GQ ran an update note at the bottom of its story saying it removed the photo, and a representative for the publication said: "An image provided by a Brunello Cucinelli representative did not meet GQ's editorial standards. The image had been altered and GQ was not made aware."
The tech industry , which is largely white and male, has struggled to diversify its ranks. Women make up just 30 percent of the tech workforce, according to the Kapor Center, and they must contend with major biases. It's an issue that likely won't be solved with a quick photo edit.
