By Danielle Ohl, Digital & Online Marketing Specialist, Viking Masek Global Packaging Technologies

In recent decades, women have made some serious gains in overall labor force participation, wages and access to leadership positions. However, these gains have been slow going, and females can still face barriers when pursuing career paths in traditionally male-dominated industries like packaging.

But talk is cheap. Let's take a look at what the numbers say.

Women in packaging over the years

Packaging Digest reports that in 1976, less than five percent of packaging industry jobs were held by women. Today, that number has risen to 30-40%! With 57% of women currently participating in the labor force overall, we can see the gender gap narrowing in the packaging industry.

This trend is also noticeable in packaging education. An academic specialist at Michigan State University’s School of Packaging said that in the fall of 2014, incoming students hit a true 50/50 split among males and females for the first time ever.

But despite these gains, barriers remain for women in the workforce when it comes to roles traditionally held by men. The United Stated Department of Commerce reports that women are still vastly underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers in general, holding only 24% of STEM jobs in 2015. Additionally, while women are represented in operational, leadership and STEM roles in other sectors, the packaging industry still lags, with women occupying predominantly customer service, sales or marketing roles.

The packaging gender gap

So what’s holding women back from careers in packaging? The short answer: there is no short answer. Like many industries that have historically been dominated by one gender, the packaging sector can be slow to change when it comes to narrowing the gender gap.

There are many contributing factors to female underrepresentation in the packaging industry. For one, there is a lack of high profile female role models. There has also been a general absence of support and networking groups for women in packaging. Luckily, groups like PPWLN have stepped in to fill the void, providing a powerful platform and strength-in-numbers for the female faction of the packaging workforce.

And for many women, a career in packaging just isn’t something that crosses their minds. Couple that with packaging not being widely recognized as a career path in itself, and you get an industry that can stagnate when it comes to attracting a diverse workforce.

The economic value of gender diversity

An investment in hiring and retaining women isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s an economic imperative that can increase profits. Bottom line: gender diversity is great for a company's bottom line.

Here's why: it only makes sense that as users of packaging become more diverse, that diversity should be reflected in the people behind the packaging. Women can offer unique business perspectives that lead to deeper consumer insights, which results in a better product and increased market penetration.

Eva Peters, global head of packaging development at Novartis Consumer Health, explains in an interview with Packaging Digest that “in packaging specifically…women bring a breadth of life experience that allows them to provide a unique point of view regarding consumers’ views of packaging and their product/package selection process. This will provide the opportunity to design packaging that resonates with a more diverse array of focused ethnographic consumer groups.”

By the numbers, the World Economic Forum reports that gender diverse companies achieve better outcomes from business decisions 73% of the time, versus 58% of the time with an all-male workforce. Greater gender diversity can positively impact competitiveness, lead to higher employee satisfaction and retention, opened untapped markets and lead to greater innovation.

The future looks bright, but change is slow

While forward-looking data specifically relating to women in in the packaging industry is scarce, we can extrapolate a few predictions from general studies related to women in the workforce.

The good news: females are breaking barriers every day. According to a recent LinkedIn study that analyzed over 40 years of data, many traditionally male industries have seen significant growth in female representation. Related to the packaging industry in particular, career paths in Consumer Goods and Design have seen a marked jump in interest among women, with increases in female representation of 71% and 70% respectively when comparing the current decade with the previous.

There has also been significant growth in the number of women pursuing careers in STEM fields, which are vital to the packaging industry. LinkedIn reports that over the last four decades, women have been making significant progress in occupying traditionally male-dominated careers like Engineering and Technical Sales.

Now for the not-so-good news: in 2017, the World Economic Forum predicted that full gender parity in the workforce is still over 200 years away. LinkedIn surmised in its study that progress has been quite slow, with the proportion of female leaders in the workforce increasing by only two percentage points over the last 10 years among the industries they studied.

So what does this all mean for women in the packaging industry? Similar to other traditionally male-dominated industries, we can expect that growth in gender equity will continue, but at a slow and inconsistent pace.

This should not necessarily be discouraging. Like making modifications in personal habits, gradual and purposeful gains in gender equity may prove to be more sustainable than drastic changes. After all, slow and steady wins the race.