Participation of Women in Logistics Through Innovation

Introduction

The presence of women in different social areas and especially business has been studied for a long time. This can be seen in old works such as Basset (1994), who observes the early nineties of the last century, there was a small decline in growing female participation in the labor market, or the work of Scott (1995), who studies the participation of migrant women in Turkish-Cypriot tourism.

These studies are maintained, perhaps with greater intensity, in recent dates. It is the case of Borowski (2017), who studies the low participation of women, in management positions, in the world of finance, or the Hwang, Kim, and Pae (2017), who comment that in 2015 there are up to 58 women Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) serving in the first Fortune 500 companies. Finally, García, Hernández, and Hernández (2018), who analyze the participation of women in the market of products and services.

In another field of knowledge, in multiple works (Barreto et al., 2016; De Burgos et al., 2016; Schwarz et al., 2016), it has been shown that business logistics is related to almost all areas of an organization.

This means a great advantage since it allows analyzing, from its perspective, different characteristics of an organization, such as the generation of knowledge (De Burgos et al., 2016), the innovation (Tarazón et al., 2016). Even new business approaches, such as Industry 4.0 (Hernández, Hernández, & García, 2018) or situations related to the safety of personnel (Barreto et al., 2016). Also, external aspects, such as the impact, of logistics applications, on consumers (Schwarz et al., 2016).

But this wide interaction with different areas of business and its environment brings as a disadvantage that the study of logistics is complex. By this some models have been created to facilitate their teaching, one of them is the Logistics Model Based on Positions (MoLoBaC) (Hernández, Hernández, & García, 2018).

The third area of knowledge that is of interest in this work is multicriteria models (Ali et al., 2017; Ferretti & Montibeller, 2016; Pamucar et al., 2017; Rylov & Reimer, 2014). In particular are interesting the Multiattribute Models (MM) (Heinonen, 2018; Hernández, Hernández & García, 2018; Pergher & Almeida, 2018; Tarazón et al. 2016; Xia et al., 2018). But especially the Multiattribute Models with multiplicative factors (MMwMf [MMcFm]), which are very simple to generate and implement. The MMcFm have the great advantage that, at the moment of selecting an alternative, they offer clear information about the quality of the same. In addition, these MMcFm, are endowed with a great flexibility, which allows them to contribute to the solution of various kinds of problem.

The fourth area of business, which is highly relevant to this research, is innovation (Chemmanur & Tian, 2018; Dubkevics, 2015; Resele, 2015; Tarazón, 2016; Tarazón et al., 2016; Žižlavsky, 2013) and the processes necessary to implement it. The importance of innovation is vital in any organization since it can be said that it is, they who keep organizations alive, and without any doubt, in the business world, we can say: innovates or perishes.

From the interrelation of these four fields of knowledge and business, it reaches the general objective of this work: Use the different areas of the Logistics Model Based on Positions to measure, through a Multiattribute Model, the female participation in logistics, having as a thread the innovation processes.

In order to achieve this general objective, at the same time, four specific objectives must be achieved: