Women in ERP: what we actually see from the recruiting side
ERP has a smaller share of women than tech overall, and tech's share is already poor. We notice it every week in the shape of our own shortlists: functional consulting and project management lean somewhat more balanced; technical tracks — SuiteScript, ABAP, SDK work — remain heavily male; and practice leadership thins out again even where the consulting layer below it doesn't.
That's the honest baseline. It's improving, but slowly, and mostly at the platforms and partners that decided to work at it rather than wait for it.
What the imbalance costs
Skip the corporate framing for a moment and look at it as a hiring problem, because that's what it is. ERP is a market with a structural talent shortage — we've written repeatedly about the gaps across every platform we cover. An industry that under-recruits half the possible workforce is choosing to make its own shortage worse.
It also shows up in delivery. Implementations succeed or fail on requirements gathering and change management: getting a warehouse team, a finance office and a sales floor to tell you the truth about how they work. Teams with a range of communication styles are simply better at that. The consultants our clients rave about are rarely the deepest technicians; they're the best listeners.
What moves the number
Things we've seen genuinely change outcomes, from our side of the desk:
Published salary ranges. Negotiation-based pay quietly widens gender pay gaps; stated bands narrow them. It's one of the reasons we publish our salary bands openly rather than treating them as leverage.
Role adverts written for the job, not the stereotype. Every "rockstar developer" and ten-requirement wishlist measurably narrows who applies. The best-responding adverts we run describe the actual work and frame requirements generously.
Flexibility treated as standard rather than a concession. ERP consulting travels; hybrid and remote-friendly roles consistently draw broader, stronger shortlists — something the US market worked out faster than the UK.
And visible progression. Women leave ERP mid-career at the point where practice leadership starts looking closed. Partners that promote visibly from within retain the people the rest of the market is trying to hire.
If you're building a team and want your shortlist to look like the whole talent pool, we should talk. If you're building a career in ERP — whoever you are — our role guides show what every path pays in 2026.