- 18
- APR
- 2012
It’s indeed a man’s world in procurement – latest salary survey results
Author: Jonathan Webb - Categories:
A recent PIU study shows that women’s salaries still very much lag behind men’s.
Following from Sanna Pearson's blog, it seems as though the careers of female procurement officers cannot breach the glass ceiling.
Our study, in conjunction with the PLN and People in Procurement, confirms the relatively worse conditions that women receive in procurement.
The research found that women earned an average wage of €83,000, compared to €118,000 earned by men. This was taken from a global sample covering over 1,000 purchasing professionals from widespread industries.
There was a stark difference between men and women’s salaries at every level of the procurement hierarchy. For the same job, male regional category managers earn €27,000 more than women and men in a director’s position enjoyed €32,500 more than their female counter-parts.
Men also consistently earn higher bonuses. Even at buyer-level, the most junior in this study, male buyers can expect bonuses triple those of their female counterparts. This suggests that the contribution of women in procurement is still perceived as lower than the work of men. This may be a legacy of procurement’s historic routes in male-dominated engineering and finance, as my colleague Sanna Pearson has argued.
This seems to support similar studies from outside the function. In all developing economies, women’s salaries lag behind men’s. However, in some respect, procurement does worse than other sectors. In the US, for instance, women nearly earn 80% of men’s level, whereas in this sample the amount is nearer to 70%.
This study shows that although procurement has a long way to go before it can say that it offers women the same conditions as men.
For more on the procurement salary, please contact j.webb@procurement-iu.com.
