The Leadership Gap Manufacturing Can No Longer Ignore

Women have earned greater responsibilities, it’s time to put more of them in charge.

Manufacturing has spent decades talking about the workforce gap, yet one of its most persistent blind spots remains leadership representation. Women continue to enter the sector with technical ability, ambition and curiosity, but far fewer advance into roles where decisions are made. The problem is not competence or work ethic. It’s a system that was never designed with their long-term growth in mind.

For organizations focused on productivity, innovation and continuity, this gap carries real consequences. As experienced leaders retire and technology reshapes how work gets done, manufacturing needs a broader, more resilient leadership bench.

The question is no longer whether women belong in manufacturing. That has been answered repeatedly on shop floors, within engineering teams and in leadership meetings across the country—and around the globe. The real question is: Why are so many women plateauing before reaching positions of influence? Several changes must happen before advancement is no longer the exception.

Industry experts interviewed for this article approach the issue from different angles. With experiences spanning nonprofit workforce development, manufacturing leadership, technical education and high-tech organizational strategy, their perspectives reveal how early exposure, workplace culture, education and leadership visibility intersect to either limit or unlock opportunity.

Early Exposure

For Kara Branch, the leadership gap begins long before resumes enter applicant-tracking systems. As founder and CEO of Black Girls Do Engineer Corp. in Houston, Branch has spent years examining where girls disengage from technical pathways and why those exits often go unnoticed.

“The curiosity is there early,” Branch says. “What disappears over time is consistent access and reinforcement.” She points to middle school and early high school as critical inflection points, when girls often receive fewer signals that engineering and manufacturing are viable long-term options.

Branch emphasizes that this is not a question of interest fading naturally. “Girls don’t lose interest because they aren’t capable,” she explains. “They lose it because the system stops showing them where they fit.” Without sustained mentorship, exposure and visible outcomes, confidence erodes quietly.

The consequences ripple outward. Fewer girls pursuing technical education means fewer women entering early career manufacturing roles. That reduction narrows the pool of future leaders before companies begin recruiting. For Branch, addressing leadership equity requires early and intentional investment, not last-minute hiring initiatives.

The Impact of Culture

While early exposure influences entry, workplace culture shapes who remains. Jim Mayer, founder of The Manufacturing Connector consultants in Phoenix, has noticed how cultural blind spots undermine retention even when recruitment improves.

“The industry wasn’t built for women,” Mayer says. “That doesn’t mean women don’t belong here. It means leaders have to be honest about what needs to change.” This includes how women are often held to higher standards for promotion and face increased scrutiny once they step into leadership roles.

In some cases, cultural issues can masquerade as performance concerns. “Retention exposes culture,” Mayer says. “If people leave, it’s usually not because they can’t do the work. It’s because the environment doesn’t support them.” Women, he adds, tend to recognize these signals quickly.

One structural change made the issue visible. When personal identifiers were removed from apprenticeship applications, Mayer observed a significant increase in placement rates for women. “The talent was always there,” he states. “Bias was what filtered it out.”

For manufacturing leaders, these patterns point to a brutal truth. Culture is not a perk or a morale exercise. It is operational infrastructure. Without it, training investments, recruitment efforts and diversity commitments lose momentum.

Necessity truly can be the mother of invention. For Karla Trotman this happened when she took maternity leave while working as a supply chain specialist at IKEA and soon experienced the difficulties many new mothers face in their professional and personal lives, The situation prompted her to found the Belly Button Boutique in 2008, an online shop for pre- and postnatal women.

Her motherly entrepreneurial success, in turn, inspired Trotman to build on her parents success and dramatically expand the electronics manufacturing company they founded in 1986, Electro Soft Inc. (ESI), through acquisitions and a push toward online marketing. Trotman, who nows serves as ESI’s CEO and president, has earned numerous accolades for the company’s meteoric rise, and recently appeared on Mayer’s “Tradecraft: The Future of Manufacturing” YouTube documentary series.

Education as an Accelerator

Bridging the gap between potential and advancement often begins in the classroom. Antigone Sharris, an engineering technology instructor at River Grove, Illinois-based Triton College who has worked in both manufacturing and academia, views education as the earliest proving ground for leadership.

“Hands-on learning changes everything,” Sharris says. “When students build, test and solve real problems, confidence follows.” Her teaching approach mirrors industry expectations, treating classrooms like job interviews rather than passive learning environments.

Sharris challenges the assumption that leadership potential emerges later in a career. “We often wait too long to identify capability,” she notes. “Students who learn to advocate for themselves early are better prepared to lead later.” That preparation includes comfort with ambiguity, collaboration and vulnerability.

Community colleges also have an important role in workforce development. And, for many students, such programs offer the most direct path into manufacturing roles with upward mobility.

“They produce adaptable, job-ready professionals,” Sharris says. “Industry partnerships here could dramatically strengthen the leadership pipeline.”

Education, Sharris argues, should not only prepare students to enter the workforce but also equip them to grow within it.

Leadership Credibility

In advanced manufacturing environments, leadership credibility often stems from proximity to the work itself. And early technical experience can shape how leaders solve problems and earn trust, notes Annemarie Breu, senior director of automation software deployment and incubation at Siemens AG.

“I started next to the machines,” Breu says. “That perspective stays with you.” She explains that leaders who understand daily operational challenges are better positioned to remove barriers rather than unintentionally create them.

Breu cautions against equating leadership with visibility alone, adding that “influence comes from solving real problems consistently.” For women, that clarity can provide stability in environments where expectations are sometimes implicit rather than stated.

To optimize results, work teams should be diverse and steered by leaders who can balance autonomy with accountability, according to Breu. That balance allows different problem-solving approaches to coexist without sacrificing performance.

For organizations navigating digital transformation and automation, Breu argues that leadership effectiveness depends as much on human understanding as on technical strategy.

Intentional Mentorship

While mentorship programs continue to gain momentum, not all initiatives are equal. Poorly designed mentorship can reinforce disengagement rather than prevent it.

“Mentorship can’t be performative,” Mayer warns. “It has to lead somewhere.” He stresses that mentors must possess empathy and provide context, particularly when supporting women navigating environments that weren’t designed for them.

Branch echoes the importance of representation. “When girls see someone who looks like them in leadership, possibility becomes real,” she says. Without that visibility, mentorship risks remaining abstract.

Mentorship must include advocacy, because teaching skills is only part of it, Sharris adds. Students and early career professionals need help navigating systems, not mastering tasks. Leadership often requires confidence before certainty.

“Early guidance looks different than executive coaching,” Breu opines. Organizations that support both stages are more likely to retain women and advance them into leadership roles.

Redefining Advancement

Advancement pathways should be visible, credible and attainable, according to the industry experts interviewed here. Without transparency, leadership roles can feel theoretical rather than achievable.

“Women often see advancement paths that lead away from operations,” Mayer says. “That reinforces the idea that leadership isn’t meant to exist on the floor.” Creating visible examples of frontline leadership can shift that perception.

Many women leave manufacturing not by choice but due to exhaustion, Branch laments. “We’ve had conversations with women who are done fighting,” she says. “That’s not a pipeline issue. That’s a culture issue.”

Sharris and Breu both stress that leadership development must begin earlier. Waiting a decade to identify potential leaders limits organizational agility and unnecessarily narrows the field.

Future Needs

Advancing women in manufacturing is not a single initiative or policy change. It is a long-term commitment that touches education, culture, leadership visibility and trust. Progress depends on consistency more than slogans, the experts emphasize.

The future depends on who we prepare today, and leadership sets the tone. If leaders don’t change, the numbers won’t either. There needs to be a deeper collaboration between education and industry, and companies need to redefine what effective leadership looks like.

Manufacturing competitiveness depends on expanding who gets to lead, not as a symbolic gesture but as a strategic imperative. The industry already has the talent. The challenge now is whether it will build systems that allow that talent to rise.

Workplace Violence: The Threat That Undermines Advancement

As manufacturing works to strengthen its workforce and advance more women into leadership roles, one issue remains consistently underexamined: workplace violence.

While safety conversations in manufacturing often focus on equipment, compliance and physical hazards, violence directed at people—particularly women in male-dominated environments—receives far less attention. Yet data and recent tragedies reveal that this risk directly affects retention, advancement and trust in the workplace.

Over the past decade, several cases have exposed how violence escalates when warning signs go unaddressed. In 2021, Promise Mays and Pamela Sled were killed at a manufacturing facility in Wisconsin. That same year, Jeyasre Kathiravel was murdered inside a textile factory in Italy. In 2017, Outi Hicks, a 32-year-old union carpenter apprentice, was killed at her workplace in Arizona. More recently, in 2025, welder Amber Czech was killed following escalating threats tied to her work environment.

These cases span industries, geographies and organizational structures, yet they share a common thread: Concerns were present before violence occurred.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workplace violence accounts for a significant portion of fatal occupational injuries among women. Research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health indicates that harassment, intimidation and threats often precede physical violence, particularly in environments where women are isolated, underrepresented or lack trusted reporting mechanisms.

For women in manufacturing, engineering and the trades, risk is not limited to extreme cases. Many experience early warning behaviors long before an incident occurs. When those signals are minimized or dismissed, trust erodes. Over time, talented employees disengage or exit entirely.

This dynamic has direct implications for leadership development. Organizations cannot build sustainable pipelines if women don’t feel safe in the workforce. Advancement depends on presence, which depends on safety.

Addressing workplace violence requires more than policy updates or reactive training. It demands cultural accountability. Leaders must be willing to intervene early, take concerns seriously and treat behavioral warning signs as operational risks rather than interpersonal conflicts.

Safety is not separate from workforce strategy. It’s foundational to it.

As the main article explores the broader challenge of advancing women in manufacturing, workplace violence must be understood as a structural barrier, not an isolated issue. Without addressing the environments that allow intimidation and escalation to persist, efforts to recruit, retain and promote women will continue to fall short.

Workplace safety is not only about preventing accidents. It’s about protecting people. 

Written by: Meaghan Ziemba, Contributing Editor, for Advanced Manufacturing.org.