Women in logistics: an example of gender empowerment.

Byline: Nazir Ahmed Shaikh

The Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) initiative has been at the forefront of transforming business policies, practices and approaches to advance gender equality and create opportunities for women and girls, engaging more than 2,000 businesses globally to date. The global movement for gender equality and women's empowerment has broken new ground in recent years, making headlines in the media on sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace and putting the business community in the spotlight.

From driving the representation and leadership of women in management and investment decisions and from ensuring equal pay for work of equal value, to increasing support for women-owned businesses and entrepreneurs, companies of all sizes and from all sectors play a tremendous role in advancing gender equality and women's empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community. In tandem with the emergence of gender equality as a critical corporate sustainability and risk mitigation issue, business action to advance women's empowerment is also central to the achievement of global multi-stakeholder agendas, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The logistics industry needs a more diverse workforce, but it suffers from poor perceptions about career opportunities. The logistics industry also suffers from poor perceptions of its career opportunities, which has led to a debate around skills gaps and a lack of gender diversity.

Addressing perceptions that the logistics industry is a career option for a very specific type of person is a real challenge. The impression that roles primarily involve moving and lifting. What's more, which means the legacy workforce is more male dominated.

When a young lady turns into grown up, and it is time to make a decision about a future career, how many parents will consider the logistic profession as a good choice? In the variety of modern specializations, they would rather recommend studying one of the liberal sciences. It includes medical care, social workers, and many other. Lately, such academic services are becoming more and more popular. In fact, today limitations can be found neither in study opportunities nor among job offers.

Why are there still leftovers of prejudices, which prevent smart women from becoming a highly appreciated specialist in thea-logistic industry? Or is the equality problem still existing in the field? If there is a child, which is bright enough to...