Supply Chain Management and Gender

Abstract

Abstract This chapter describes how the gender relations that are present in the globalization process do not reflect the neutral practice presented in the literature, but instead represent a gendered phenomenon that promotes new arrangements of inequalities that impact supply chain management. For decades, gender inequity in supply chains was a “hidden” problem in several sectors, but in the early twenty-first century it is an overt challenge for supply chain management. Gender inequity exists in supply chains when there is low participation of women-owned businesses in supply, a clear wage inequity along the supply chain, and the identification of modern slavery or forced labor related to gender in any tier of a supply chain. A future agenda for gender issues in supply chains should address a range of issues, from the increase in the number of women-owned suppliers and its impacts, to equalization of income among genders throughout supply chains, to complete eradication of modern slavery in local and global supply chains.