Championing Women Leadership and Diversity in a Male-Dominated Logistics Industry

Often considered as the male-dominated space, logistics actually holds a big opportunity for women in the workforce. It is a very broad industry, covering the physical process of accumulating resources, the transportation or positioning of those resources to the final distribution. However, sometimes it hits different when people move against the major beliefs in society. There's unconscious gender bias that plastered the mind to act accordingly and hold back the true intention of one's ambition.

Based on a research by the International Labor Organization (ILO) titled Breaking barriers: Unconscious gender bias in the workplace, unconscious gender bias is defined as unintentional and automatic mental associations based on gender, stemming from traditions, norms, values, culture, and/or experience. Automatic associations feed into decision-making, enabling a quick assessment of an individual according to gender and gender stereotypes.

An assistant professor in the University of Denver's Department of Psychology and the paper's lead author, Daniel Storage observed, "Stereotypes that portray brilliance as a male trait are likely to hold women back across a wide range of prestigious careers."

However, that is not the case for Roolin Njotosetiadi. As one of the few female students in mechanical engineering major of Nanyang Technological University, it is never been much of an issue for her to climb the educational ladder along with the other male group. The spirit and unconditional effort are what carried her to the C-Suite position at one of the leading logistics companies in Indonesia, Logisly.

Women in the workforce

Globally, women are underrepresented in corporations, and the share of women decreases with each step up the corporate hierarchy. However, many companies have shown their commitment to gender equality by establishing family-friendly policies and facilitating women’s careers and professional networks. For example, pregnancy leave and other office facilities such as nursing room and so on.

Nevertheless, unconscious gender bias continues to impact women in the workplace, and more must be done to enable highly skilled women to advance into leadership positions. As quoted from The Economic Times, in 2010, women formed only eight percent of the logistics workforce which has steadily increased to 20 percent in 2018.

Since the designation of Raden Ajeng (RA) Kartini as a National Independence Hero based on the Presidential Decree of President Soekarno in 1964, Indonesia has experienced socioeconomic change and rapid growth in women’s educational attainment. However, throughout this period, Indonesian women have remained only moderately engaged in the labor market, with the female-male labor force participation ratio hovering around 0.6, based on Female Labor Force Participation in Asia: Indonesia Country Study by Cornell University ILR School.

For Roolin, there are two things that should be highlighted. First, it's all about perception, women can never be smarter than men is a very wrong one. Second, as people starting a family, they will face some difficulty adjusting to the work-life balance. However, since there's this naturalized obligation in women to take charge of the which of family, it sometimes becomes 10 times harder.

"In Logisly, we tried to provide a safe space for women to build a career while also having responsibility in a household. With 40% of our employees are women, I personally want to create a healthy environment for them to develop their talent in logistics," Roolin added.

In fact, the Indonesian tech industry is getting more support from women's presence in the field. There are also some initiatives launched, for example, non-profit aims to educate and empower women who are passionate about technology, Girls in Tech. Also, the recent one, Elevate Women program to facilitate womenpreneurs in the creative industry.

Women's presence in the tech industry will always be expected. The thing is, there's still an inherent perception in some industries that women are less capable than men. Roolin also mentioned that the higher number of male CEO in Indonesia is not due to an unsupportive environment, but sometimes women have their own unconscious bias against themselves, that they think they're less capable. In fact, they're not.

"Sit at the table! If you have the opportunity to participate, do it! Don't ever think that you don't deserve to be part of something big. Boost your confidence. If you're there, you deserve to be there." She added.

The rise of logistics

With the ups and downs due to the restriction policy at the beginning of the pandemic crisis, instead of slowing down, the logistics industry was capable to recover and accelerate, both from its business performance and the additional capital as proven by recent funding news from many local logistics platforms.

Overall, there is a decline in logistics demand last year, but some of the sectors are still growing. Logisly as one of the tech players trying to make diversification, as some of the sectors lay low, they reflexively shifted into the crowded market.  As the pandemic creates unprecedented effects, companies are trying to sustain the cash flow. "Luckily for us, that is our value proposition for the transporter," Roolin added.

Roolin, through Logisly, is now focused on three things, expanding network with shippers and transporters using the flywheel strategy in order to better its services; improving operations with available automation supported by the latest technology, with the B2B model, performance is essential. They want to build not only tech solutions, but also trust from all our partners to manage their end-to-end performance; growing in terms of people development. Logisly is an asset-light tech company, people are its main asset.

"We continue on our effort to not only recruit really good people to join our team but make sure the team we have actually grown with Logisly and feel that they can see this as a place where they can live to their fullest potential," Roolin added.

Based on the Startus-insights research, Digital transformation accounts for €1.42 trillion investments in logistics by 2025. However, the digital platform penetration in the logistics industry is still quite low, at least, that is what Roolin observed. In terms of Shipper, it's time to leave the conventional way of manual ordering to all the paper-based invoicing. Many platforms are available to support digital transformation. Also, for the transporter, it will be more flexible to get an order. With the minimum effort, they can increase truck utilization and basic income. The business will be more seamless and totally digital, cost will be less and less burdening. However, with all the support of all the existing automation, disruption should always happen every day within the people.

"Disruption in logistics is quite extensive and this is just the tip of the iceberg," she added.

Logistics as an industry intersects with many other industries, especially e-commerce. In Logisly, there are at least two to connect the dots to the e-commerce field. Many of its operations are last-mile, but some are investing in its own warehouse where they need a bigger fleet from warehouse to warehouse. Also, the last-mile players need support with their hub in certain cities. In addition, digital payment is also one of the must-adopted technology. "As a tech company, we need to fastly adapt to the latest automation in order to increase productivity and speed. For as long as I know, the key of logistics is speed," she added.

As labor is a critical element of any logistics operating model, it holds big opportunities not only for men but also for women to join the workforce and the logistics sector is now supporting talented and energetic women by fostering a culture where women are provided with a various platform to develop and groom themselves. Many companies have taken positive steps by introducing a safe and women-oriented culture as well as work–life balance initiatives.

"Logistics is in a position to serve all parties with goods to its destination. It involves many people and covers all areas. We can't do everything on our own, therefore, we need partners, in order to develop the hyperlocal-on-demand solution. The key is collaboration. If one should build everything, we wouldn't have enough cost and there wouldn't be enough time," Roolin said.