DEI Often Stops Where the Contract Starts
American companies have spent years perfecting the art of talking about inclusion. Handbooks have been rewritten, recruiting language has been polished, leadership trainings have been rolled out like new iPhone models, consultants have been summoned, and employee resource groups have popped up like mushrooms after a rainstorm—all to prove that diverse perspectives are not just welcome, but celebrated.
For women in leadership, these changes are steps in the right direction. They mean we can actually lead without having every decision second-guessed by a less qualified man whose main credential is, well, being born with the right equipment.
But here’s the catch: policies are only as good as the follow-through, and there’s a blind spot big enough to drive a company retreat bus through. As remote work and technology have boomed, companies are shipping more work overseas. Our shiny DEI policies promise women autonomy and a break from the old boys’ club, but then we introduce them to outside teams who still treat the nearest man in the room—or on the Zoom—as the only one worth talking to. Should we just slap an asterisk on our DEI statements? *Some exclusions may apply.
The Vendor Relationship Is Still a Workplace
This is especially relevant in development, technology, design, and marketing environments, where American companies often rely on offshore teams to handle specialized or high-volume work. The issue is not that offshore work is inherently bad, or that any one country should be treated as a monolith. India, for example, has brilliant developers, modern firms, strong women leaders, and professionals who operate with complete respect for female authority.
But let’s not kid ourselves: patriarchal norms are still alive and well in plenty of places, and American companies need to get real about how those attitudes can sneak into cross-cultural work.
Pew Research found that 87% of Indian adults completely or mostly agree that “a wife must always obey her husband,” and 80% agree that when jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women. Those are not fringe opinions. They point to a broader belief system in which male authority and male economic priority are still widely normalized.
India also ranked 131st out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Index, and McKinsey’s 2025 research found that women hold only 17% of C-suite roles and 20% of board roles in Indian corporations.
Those numbers don’t mean every Indian vendor is going to ignore a woman in charge. But maybe, just maybe, American companies should stop acting shocked when some offshore teams have trouble seeing a woman as the technical, creative, or strategic boss in the room.
For Example…
I’ve asked offshore dev teams for a revision, only to be told—very patiently—that it’s impossible because ‘that’s just not how the system works.’ Cue me, explaining right back (to their utter shock) exactly how the system can, in fact, do the thing. Sometimes, just to drive it home, I write the code myself.
Then I watch a male colleague suggest an edit and—presto—it’s accepted, no questions asked. Meanwhile, every bit of my direction gets challenged, reinterpreted, delayed, or treated like a suggestion waiting for a permission slip. I’ve even been told a call couldn’t happen unless my male counterpart was available, even if he had nothing to add and spent the whole meeting on mute.
I’ve had designs changed without approval, only to have the vendor explain—helpfully, of course—why their version is obviously superior.
And yes, I understand the difference between collaboration and being difficult. I work in development and design. Pushback is part of the job. Sometimes the answer really is no. Sometimes a request creates a technical problem, a budget problem, a timeline problem, or a maintenance problem. I don’t want a team that blindly agrees with every direction I give just because I said it.
But there’s a world of difference between thoughtful pushback and the kind that magically appears only when a woman is giving the direction. When I offer input and get a mini-lecture about why I don’t understand the system—especially when I’m the one explaining the technical path forward—that’s not collaboration. That’s just a waste of everyone’s time, especially the company’s.
The Cost Savings Start to Look Different
Companies usually outsource work for one main reason: cost.
Sure, we can dress it up with talk about scalability, global talent, production capacity, and flexible support. All of that might be true. But let’s be honest: most of the time, it comes down to the same basic math—this team is cheaper than hiring in-house.
Fine. Businesses have budgets. I get it—I live in the real world too.
But how much money is a company actually saving if its internal female leaders have to spend hours re-explaining approved decisions, correcting work that ignored direction, joining unnecessary follow-up calls, or waiting for a male colleague to validate what a female director already said?
How cheap is that bargain hourly rate when your own team is spending hours managing around the vendor?
That’s the part that never shows up on the invoice. The vendor’s hours look efficient on paper, but the internal cost? Sky-high, if anyone bothered to do the math. A female leader wastes time explaining the same thing twice. Projects slow down because direction is treated like a suggestion. Designs get redone because someone decided to freelance without approval. And a male colleague gets dragged into a call just because the vendor seems to breathe easier when there’s a man on screen.
And eventually, the cost isn’t just about the project. A woman who’s worked her tail off to earn her role starts wondering why she spends so much of her day fighting to be treated like she belongs there. She might start looking for a company where her authority is actually protected, not something she has to keep re-auditioning for. At that point, the company isn’t just risking project efficiency—it’s risking the loss of the very talent it claims to value.
Vendor Behavior Is Part of Workplace Culture
This is where DEI has to move beyond the employee handbook.
If a company wouldn’t tolerate an internal employee repeatedly bypassing a female director, it shouldn’t tolerate a vendor doing it. If an employee refused to join a call unless a man was present, that would be addressed. If an employee ignored a woman’s technical direction until a male colleague repeated it, no one would need a three-part committee discussion to understand the issue.
But when the same behavior comes from an offshore team, companies tend to smooth it over as ‘communication differences’ or ‘cultural nuance.’ Sometimes, sure, cultural nuance is real. Cross-cultural work takes patience. Not every awkward moment is discrimination. Not every misunderstanding is bias. And sometimes a vendor is just bad at communication, period. But when the pattern keeps repeating, it’s time for companies to stop hiding behind politeness.
If a vendor regularly looks past the woman leading the work, waits for a man to confirm her direction, refuses to meet unless a male counterpart is available, changes her approved work, or explains her own area of expertise back to her, that’s not a harmless cultural difference. That’s a vendor management problem. And if that vendor is part of the daily work environment, then it’s also a workplace culture problem.
Companies Need to Ask Better Questions
Vendor evaluation usually focuses on cost, technical skill, availability, turnaround time, communication tools, and whether the team can join meetings at whatever hour makes everyone equally miserable. While these are important qualifiers, they’re not enough.
Companies also need to ask whether the vendor can respect the company’s leadership structure. Not in theory. In practice.
Will the team take direction from a female lead without requiring male confirmation? Will they address the person assigned as the decision-maker, even when a man is also on the call? Will they challenge work based on technical reasoning instead of assumptions about who understands the system? Do they have women in client-facing, technical, or leadership roles? What happens if someone on their team repeatedly bypasses the assigned lead?
Companies should make expectations explicit during onboarding. The assigned lead is the decision-maker. Direction does not need to be validated by a male colleague unless the actual project structure requires it. Approved designs should not be changed without approval. Technical pushback should be specific, documented, and tied to the work. If the vendor has a concern, they can raise it professionally with the person leading the project.
None of this is rocket science. It only feels complicated because companies are way more comfortable writing values statements than actually enforcing them.
Women Shouldn’t Have to Carry this
One of the most exhausting parts of this dynamic is that women are often expected to handle it themselves.
We’re supposed to correct the behavior without sounding defensive. Document the pattern without looking dramatic. Reassert authority without being labeled difficult. Keep the project moving while hiding just how much extra time is being wasted behind the scenes.
That’s not inclusion. That’s just asking women to quietly absorb the gap between what a company says it values and what it actually enforces.
Companies need to actually back the women they promote. That means documenting repeated vendor behavior. It means letting female leaders escalate issues without having to build a courtroom case first. And it means male colleagues need to redirect authority in real time, instead of accidentally accepting power that was never theirs to begin with.
Equality Has to Travel With the Work
Global partnerships can be great. Offshore development can be smart, efficient, and even collaborative. But if a company is going to build global teams, its standards need to pack a suitcase and travel with the work.
That includes the standard that women in leadership aren’t just there for decoration. They’re not placeholders. They’re not there to relay decisions from some man who must be lurking just out of frame.
They are the authority because the company made them the authority.
If American companies want credit for promoting women, they also need to protect those women when leadership gets uncomfortable, inconvenient, or culturally unfamiliar to the teams hired to support them.
Otherwise, your DEI policy is just window dressing—fluff with a logo.
