Closing the digital gender gap in supply chain

By? Melanie Salter , Director of Supply Chain Research at boom! Global Network

To mark International Women’s Day, last week?we hosted?a?panel discussion?based on the United?Nation’s theme for?2023,?DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.?Our?reason for embracing this theme?with?such?gusto?was?a finding from?our annual survey?of boom!?members?at the start of the year: the number one supply chain topic of interest for our members?all around the world?was supply chain technology.?Coincidence or?finger?on?the?pulse??

The use of technology in supply chain has become critical to an organisation’s overall competitive advantage. COVID-19 hammered home the need for digitisation for end-to-end supply chain visibility; decisions that can be taken in five seconds are left to machine learning and artificial intelligence; robotics and automation are commonplace, and so on. But who is designing, maintaining and using this technology in our supply chains???

In an ideal world we’d now share a baseline statistic on the number of women working in supply chain technology. However, we couldn’t find any – though not for want of trying. The data we could find shows that representation for women in technology is even worse than that for women in supply chain.?Gartner’s 2022 Women in Supply Chain research?reports 39% of the supply chain workforce is female, while?Deloitte?reports?that women make up just 26% of the entire tech workforce.??

If we take the adage ‘what gets measured gets managed’, then gender equality in supply chain technology is clearly not getting the attention it deserves.?

Why do we need more women in supply chain technology??

Why does the subject of women in supply chain technology deserve more attention? That was the first question we put to our panel of senior leaders in the field: Boyana Petkova (Johnson & Johnson); Ashleigh Smith (Microsoft); and Emel Aktas (Cranfield University)?

The resounding response from all three women? Increasing the number of women in supply chain technology is good for business. More on this in the next edition of Supply Chain 50/50.??

How do we attract, retain and advance more women in supply chain technology??

The?advice on?how to attract,?retain?and advance women in?supply chain technology?is eerily?similar to?that of?attracting,?retaining?and advancing women in supply chain?in general, with the most important part of the diversity,?equity?and inclusion (DE&I)?journey for any organisation?ensuring that?senior leadership?is?team on board?to?drive?the cultural change.?

Other excellent advice?discussed?included?(in no?particular order):?

• Diverse role models at all levels of the organisation.?
• DE&I training for all employees e.g., how to manage diverse talent; eliminating microaggressions.?
• Outreach programmes for school students?of all ages?that encourage girls?(and boys)?into STEM subjects.?
• Mentoring of women by both men and women.?
• Reverse mentoring?of men by women to explain their experience.?
• Recruitment from diverse universities.?
• Recruitment of?people with disabilities (Microsoft is actively recruiting people with autism).?
• Affinity groups?to support inclusion?e.g.,?race;?parenting; LGBTQ+.?
• Returnship?programmes for parents who have left the workforce for?a period of time.?

What are the barriers to equity??

Insert “Lack of…” at the start every bullet point above and you’ve got a list of?some?of the barriers women face in a career in supply chain technology.?

One of the biggest barriers to women’s careers is their unpaid work as carers in the home. The McKinsey/LeanIn.org?Women in the Workplace?2021?report found that one in three women wanted to downshift their career, an increase from one in four from the previous year, due to increased caring responsibilities during the pandemic. Ironically, the report also showed that women are twice as likely to contribute to and drive DE&I programmes, with many companies failing to recognise that work in performance reviews – more unpaid labour!?

What’s next for women in supply chain technology?

An increase in digital roles that are not bound by location, making flexible working available to women previously constrained by their caring duties, will increase female representation. Add to this companies with family-friendly policies and an egalitarian division of childcare and homemaking roles at home and we’re making some serious progress. However, with the?World Economic Forum projection?of another 135 years to close the global gender gap, we need to do a whole lot more if we want to bring about equality faster.?

What was clear from the hour-long discussion (watch the replay)?was the passion our panellists have for their work. Their excitement about how technology can be used to improve supply chains was infectious. All three women have smashed the glass ceiling and are role models for other women in their field.?

International Women’s Day is just one day a year, but we need to fight for gender equality all year round to bring about real change, faster. If you’ve read this article then you obviously care about equality, so we have one more take away for you: sponsor the amazing women you work with, help develop them, fight for them and get them the promotions you know they deserve. Because when you do,?#EveryoneWins.