41 percent of the workforce. 11 percent of the top seat. The gap between those two numbers tells you everything about where the industry's talent strategy is falling short.
August 2026 · Insight
The Data Tells a Clear Story
The Gartner/AWESOME Women in Supply Chain survey has tracked female representation in the industry for nearly a decade. The most recent data presents a picture that should concern any supply chain leader thinking seriously about talent.
Women now make up 41 percent of the total supply chain workforce. That is the highest level the survey has ever recorded. At face value, it suggests progress.
Look deeper and the picture changes.
Women hold just 11 percent of chief supply chain officer positions. At the VP level, representation has declined, falling from 23 percent to 21 percent in recent surveys. At the frontline manager and supervisor level, women account for roughly a third of roles. The pipeline narrows dramatically as seniority increases.
The overall workforce number has effectively plateaued, moving between 39 and 41 percent over the past four years. Gartner's own assessment is unambiguous: progress has stalled. And in some areas, it is going backward. A lower percentage of supply chain organisations now have a plan to close pay gaps than in previous years. Direct supply chain leadership engagement on gender initiatives has shrunk. The commitment that surged after 2020 is quietly receding.
Why This Matters Beyond the Metric
This is not an article about fairness, though fairness matters. It is an article about talent strategy in an industry facing a structural workforce challenge.
Supply chain and logistics is in the middle of a generational skills transformation. AI is redefining roles. The demand for professionals who combine operational depth with digital fluency has surged. MHI ranked the workforce and talent gap as the number one supply chain trend this year. Every freight forwarder, every logistics service provider, every 3PL is competing for the same limited pool of experienced, capable professionals.
In that environment, an industry that systematically loses female talent as it moves up the leadership pipeline is an industry operating with a smaller talent pool than it needs to. Not because women are leaving the sector entirely. Because they are leaving companies, or leaving leadership tracks, when the environment stops working for them.
Gartner's research identified a direct correlation: when a woman holds the top supply chain position, it has a measurable positive effect on the representation of women in leadership and across all roles in that organisation. The signal this sends is not symbolic. It changes who applies, who stays, and who sees a future worth investing in.
The companies where this dynamic is working are not running awareness campaigns. They are running better talent operations.
What Is Actually Going Wrong
Three patterns show up consistently in the data, and none of them are about overt discrimination. They are about structural defaults that most organisations have never examined closely enough to fix.
The pipeline narrows where it should not. Women enter supply chain at proportionate rates. They perform well in operational and analytical roles. But somewhere between manager and VP, the attrition accelerates. Gartner found that frontline logistics and manufacturing roles consistently show higher attrition for women compared to desk-based roles. The industry's working patterns, its travel demands, its always-on culture, and its historically inflexible expectations around availability disproportionately affect the professionals most likely to carry caregiving responsibilities alongside their careers. This is not a women's issue. It is a design issue. The operating model was built for a workforce profile that no longer represents the full talent pool.
Leadership is not leading the initiatives. Gartner's most recent survey found that direct CSCO engagement in gender representation efforts has declined. The initiatives that exist are increasingly delegated to HR rather than owned by supply chain leadership. The result is predictable: when the executive responsible for talent outcomes is not directly accountable for representation outcomes, the priority drops. It does not disappear from the stated values. It disappears from the operating rhythm.
Pay equity is losing attention. The data is moving in the wrong direction. Fewer organisations have active plans to close gender pay gaps. More respondents report that their organisation has no plans to address the issue. In a market where salary expectations for supply chain professionals are rising across the board, allowing a pay gap to persist is not just inequitable. It is a retention risk. The professionals with the most options will go where they are valued most transparently.
What the Leading Organisations Do Differently
Consumer goods and retail supply chain organisations lead the industry on female representation at the VP level, at roughly 25 percent compared to 13 percent in industrial organisations. That gap is not cultural coincidence. It reflects deliberate investment in specific practices that other sectors have been slower to adopt.
They set measurable goals and hold leadership accountable. Not aspirational statements. Specific targets tied to hiring, promotion, and retention rates, reviewed with the same rigour as financial and operational KPIs. When gender representation is measured the way margin and on-time delivery are measured, it moves.
They design flexibility into the operating model. Not as a perk. As an operating principle. Flexible scheduling, hybrid arrangements, and career pathway designs that do not penalise professionals who take parental leave or who cannot commit to 60-hour weeks during certain life stages. The organisations that figured this out kept talent that their competitors lost.
They actively develop female leaders into senior roles. Mentorship programmes that pair emerging female leaders with senior executives. Sponsorship, which is different from mentorship, where a senior leader actively advocates for a specific professional's advancement. Structured career pathing that makes the route from manager to VP to CSCO visible and achievable rather than opaque and dependent on informal networks.
They make sure women see women in leadership. The Gartner finding on this is worth repeating: when a woman holds the top supply chain role, it positively correlates with more women across the entire organisation. Representation at the top is not the end goal. It is the mechanism that accelerates everything else.
A Perspective from Inside the Industry
Imrah Chizyuka, Director of Digital Adoption and Strategy at SFL Tech, shared her perspective on where the industry stands:
"The logistics industry is an always-on industry. And similar to a chef, the hours and work-life balance historically have not been suited to accommodate women. But this is changing now.
In the recent past, there seem to be more female leaders emerging in the industry. However, this is still significantly less in proportion to men holding the same positions.
The promotion of women in leadership can only take place through the leaders and managers themselves. Management should realign staff KPIs and conduct strong mentorship programmes to encourage women. Equal pay should be non-negotiable going forward.
The future of women in logistics looks promising. Companies are beginning to recognise the value women can bring to logistics. While the industry will not change overnight, we should see higher numbers of women leading logistics companies soon."
The Business Reality
The supply chain industry does not have a surplus of talent. It has a shortage. Every credible workforce survey confirms it. Every hiring manager in logistics lives it.
An industry that draws from only part of the available talent pool while competing for the same experienced professionals as every other sector is an industry working with an artificial constraint on its own capability. Closing the gender gap in supply chain leadership is not a social initiative. It is a talent strategy with direct implications for operational performance, innovation capacity, and the ability to attract the next generation of professionals who will choose employers based on what they see at the top, not what they read in a values statement.
The data says progress has stalled. The leading organisations say it does not have to. The difference between the two is leadership that treats representation as an operational priority rather than an annual report metric.
SFL Tech's workforce is 35 percent female, spanning roles across project management, operations, functional consulting, software engineering, product development, sales, and marketing. We believe that experience and capability are the factors that matter. And we know that building the strongest possible team means ensuring that opportunity is genuinely equal for everyone who walks through the door.
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