“Uneven” progress in tackling the gender balance across food manufacturing businesses is “reducing the industry’s future leadership pipeline”, new research has found.
And while some businesses had made significant progress on the issue, huge gaps remained between those who did and those who were “standing still”, according to analysis by Meat Business Women.
The professional community for women in the meat sector tracked data from 98 business units, covering about 280,000 employees globally for its latest gender representation report – which also extended across the food manufacturing sector for the first time.
Covering businesses operating in sectors including eggs, dairy, food ingredients and seafood, as well as meat and poultry, the group’s latest study also surveyed more than 1,000 employees. It came at a “challenging” time when “investment in diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) programmes was being questioned”, said MBW global chair Laura Ryan.
Its research found a “clear divide” between those making “measurable progress” on gender balance and those that were not, Ryan said, “creating a gap that is threatening to compound the productivity crisis” and mounting labour shortages across food manufacturing.
For companies performing well against DEI metrics, MBW’s research found that women made up 46% of the workforce, compared with just 26% in lagging businesses.
Such a gap threatened to “undermine efforts to boost recruitment and attract talent”, the group added, with the divide visible at six out of seven career ladder stages.
At entry level, women represented 47% of the workforce in leading organisations compared with 26% in lagging ones, the research found. At first-line manager level, the gap also remained significant, with 40% women in leading organisations versus 25% in lagging.
Meanwhile, just 6% of CEO-level executives were women across both the total food manufacturing and meat and poultry categories.
Flexibility ‘isn’t working’
Flexibility was becoming a “strategic issue” when it came to career progression and retention, and “wasn’t working where it matters most”, the group claimed.
“Our research showed that flexibility is more likely to be identifed as a major or signiccant barrier by women aged 26 to 45,” it added.
“When flexibility limits this group, the industry loses talent at a critical career stage, when future leaders are being developed – creating long term capability gaps. Although men face flexibility barriers too, women experience these constraints more intensely across the age groups where progression typically accelerates.”
Women made up 34% of the workforce across the global food manufacturing industry (including meat and poultry), MBW’s research also revealed. This fell to 32% when only looking at meat and poultry businesses, while both sectors lagged signifricantly behind other industries.
“This sustained gap is reducing the industry’s future leadership pipeline, limiting the progression of women into senior roles, and reducing the diversity of talent available at the top,” Ryan said.
“This is no longer simply an industry-wide challenge, but increasingly a reflection of individual leadership choices,” she added.
“We can see that organisations that are making the most progress treat gender balance as a commercial priority rather than just a HR initiative. They measure representation and progression and act on the data, strengthen early career pipelines, particularly at the first leadership step, and embed flexibility in practice rather than policy alone.”
Conversely, MBW’s data showed those that were not taking deliberate action risked “falling behind on capability, culture and competitiveness”, Ryan argued.
Businesses signed up to the Food Business Charter – which calls for companies to achieve 40% female representation by 2035 – alongside partners of Meat Business Women additionally outperformed non-participants across four out of the seven career stages, including the critical transition into leadership.
To meet the charter’s ambition, the report highlighted the need for “consistent, measurable progress”. In practical terms, this would require the equivalent of a 0.6% annual increase in women entering and staying in the workforce, alongside action to ensure women progress at the same rate as men.
Closing this gap would require “sustained, industry-wide action and a clear commitment from leadership to turn insight into measurable change”, MBW urged.
“Women currently represent around a third of our workforce, highlighting a clear opportunity to strengthen representation across the industry,” Ryan added.
“The opportunity sits early in the pipeline, particularly at the first move into leadership, where organisations taking deliberate action are already building stronger and more balanced pipelines,” she said.
“The evidence is clear: progress is driven by leadership. When leaders are intentional about how people progress and apply practical, measurable strategies day to day, we see real change. Those who fail to act risk leaving talent and value on the table, while those who move forward strengthen performance, productivity and growth.”
Responding to the report, Tesco category director for meat, fish & poultry Richard Wood said a more balanced workforce was “closely linked to capability, resilience and long-term performance, and we’re seeing that suppliers taking structured, deliberate action are better positioned for the future”.
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