When it comes to women in business and in the workplace, China can boast some impressive stats. Did you know that China is home to two thirds of the world’s women billionaires? China also has one of Asia-Pacific’s highest labour force participation rates for women. However, with issues remaining in gender pay gap, gender discrimination and lack of representation in senior positions, it is clear there is work to be done.
As the world celebrates International Women’s day we thought it would be a great opportunity to share more about the role women play in China supply chain. Kinyu SCM prides itself on having a 50:50 gender ratio, and this week we were delighted to interview Cece Tang, Head of Guangzhou office for Hays international. In addition to running the Guangzhou office, Cece is heading up Hays’ ESG business unit. Cece has over 10 years’ experience developing teams across major divisions such as Engineering, Supply Chain, IT, HR and Finance.
Here is what Cece had to say about women in supply chain:
Q: Cece, lets start with the work that Hays does for Procurement and Supply Chain in China.
A: Supply Chain & Procurement is one of the best performing teams at Hays. We support companies across Consumer, E-commerce, Manufacturing and 3PL businesses to place key Supply Chain professionals.
Q: How do you feel the role of women in supply chain has changed over the last 10 years?
A: A few years back the most popular roles in Supply Chain were procurement functions, where we could only see females in Junior Buyer positions but rarely met female Procurement Managers or Directors. It could be that a manager role required extensive travel & companies seemed to prefer to have men in such roles. In recent years this remains unchanged. However, along the years “supply / demand planning” and “logistics” have become a more critical function and play a key role in overall supply chain. Across 2022 Hays filled more “planning” roles than “procurement”.
I don’t see a strong preference on male/female for these roles and I believe it’s a real opportunity for females to step up into a truly senior role in overall supply chain management. I do hope the stereotypes on women having less flexibility to travel can change; and I also hope female candidates who actually get the opportunities offered can prove that.
Q: In your experience with placing these roles, how many female applicants/candidates do you receive, and how many clients have recruited women?
A: Generally in procurement roles I rarely see any female applicants. In other roles such as planning, overall Supply Chain management, logistics, we see some female candidates but overall for Procurement & Supply Chain, there are far more male candidates than women.
Q: Are there any particular roles where the placement of women is more prevalent? Any roles where placement of men is more prevalent?
A: In some planning/demand planning, Customer Services / Logistics roles where a “detail oriented” character is required, clients may tend to have a preference on female candidates; while in “Sourcing” and “procurement” roles where strong negotiation skills or heavy traveling is required, then there may be a preference for male candidates.
Q: What do you think companies/local government could do to attract more female talent into the workplace?
A: Removing unconscious bias and conduct behavior based interviews during the qualification process among male/female candidates is the first step to providing equal opportunities. By not categorizing female/male based on gender differences will then naturally lead to a better analysis on competences. I won’t say offering a hybrid working model is beneficial to attract females – as believing women have a higher demand of work/life balance is already a stereotype. However, companies who offer flexible hours / working days will definitely attract a more diverse group of candidates.
Q: Where do you think China is in terms of Gender equality – what is your opinion on Gender pay gap?
A: Hays has been putting huge efforts to drive gender balance and we are now at 53% female in our senior leadership team globally. There is no obvious pay gap if its the same role however I rarely see a female applicant for a General Manager / MD position in Supply Chain. I’m really hoping to see more women driving their career to the executive level in Supply Chain.
Thank you, Cece for your time, and we look forward to placing more women in supply chain roles with you soon! If you need some recruitment expertise in China, feel free to get in touch here.
