Procurement and the glass ceiling: salary survey shows anti-female bias

It is perhaps an assumed fact of purchasing life that the profession is male-dominated. But is this true of senior management levels?

Although our salary survey is still open (you can take it here) our preliminary results suggest that the senior landscape is not favourable to women.

We haven’t started analysis on relative wage levels as yet, by some of the data received so far indicates that a glass ceiling is firmly in place in procurement.

The overall split of the sample is 77/22 in favour of men. But the distribution of this varies a lot.

We find the split nearer to 60/40 for the buyer level. This falls to 70/30 for Category Manager level. Senior managers are 85% men.

Most shockingly, our data shows that fewer than 10% of CPOs are women.

It will be even more interesting to see how salaries differ between the sexes. If this pattern continues throughout wage level, it is likely that women will receive a lot less than men in procurement.

If you are interesting in viewing the full results of our salary survey, please do complete our short questionnaire here.