Last Wednesday, the European Union and six member states launched a €15 million global initiative to advance women’s leadership in public ICT. The money is co-funded by France, Estonia, Germany, Belgium, Latvia, and the EU itself. The initiative is coordinated by Expertise France and implemented by a consortium of agencies across five countries.
I read the announcement twice. Then I started looking at what’s happening on this side of the Atlantic, and the gap felt wider than the ocean between them.
The EU initiative focuses on three areas: building capacity for decision-makers to integrate gender equality into digital policies, improving STEM access for women and girls, and combating technology-facilitated gender-based violence. It’s being implemented in partnership with real government agencies, with real money attached, and with a stated goal of shaping the next EU Action Plan on Gender Equality (2028-2034). They even launched a public stakeholder consultation alongside it.
In the US channel, what do we have?
We have CRN’s Women of the Channel, which honored nearly 1,700 women last year. We have panels at conferences. We have International Women’s Day posts on LinkedIn where vendors post about their “commitment to diversity” and then go back to running channel programs designed by the same five people they’ve always had in the room.
I don’t want to be cynical about this. The women on those lists and panels are doing real work. I’ve written about some of them, and their stories are genuinely inspiring. CRN also published a solid IWD 2026 piece spotlighting channel chiefs like Ruba Borno at AWS, Denise Millard at Dell, and Elisabeth De Dobbeleer at Cisco. These are women with real power shaping real programs.
But there’s a difference between celebrating individuals and building infrastructure. The EU initiative isn’t about giving awards. It’s about changing how digital policy gets made, who makes it, and making sure women have structural access to leadership roles in public technology. That’s a systems-level investment.
The US channel operates differently, obviously. It’s a private-sector ecosystem. Nobody’s expecting the federal government to write a $16 million check for women in telecom sales. But the gap between what Europe is doing at the policy level and what US channel companies are doing at the program level is striking.
Here’s what I keep noticing: the US channel has a recognition problem it treats like a pipeline problem. We keep celebrating women who’ve already made it while doing very little to change the systems that made their paths harder than they needed to be.
Look at partner program design. Most channel programs measure partner value through revenue volume, certifications completed, and deal registrations closed. None of those metrics account for who’s actually running the partner organization, who has a voice in program design feedback, or whether the program is accessible to partners led by underrepresented founders.
I talked to a woman last month who runs a 15-person MSP in the Southeast. She’s profitable, growing, and has a 94% customer retention rate. She told me she’s never been invited to a vendor advisory council. “I don’t have the revenue number they’re looking for,” she said. “But I’ve got the kind of business they say they want to build more of.”
That’s the disconnect. The EU initiative is specifically designed to bring women into policy-making roles where they can shape the systems. In the US channel, we invite women to panels about the systems and then let the same people keep designing them.
CRN’s Women of the Channel Leadership Summits are a step in the right direction. The West and East events this year are built around advancing organizational diversity and cultivating women leaders. But those are industry events, not structural changes to how programs work.
Some vendors are doing better than others. Cisco’s Elisabeth De Dobbeleer described her philosophy as centering on “active listening, truly understanding partner needs and challenges.” Dell’s Denise Millard talked about bringing “industry-leading talent” and “the partner ecosystem together.” These are good words. The question is whether they translate into program design that actively opens doors.
What would it look like if a US vendor launched something comparable to the EU initiative? Maybe a $10 million fund specifically for women-led channel partners. Not a marketing program. Not a panel sponsorship. An actual investment fund for training, certification costs, and business development for women building channel businesses.
I know someone will read this and say the channel is a meritocracy. Sell more, earn more. The program doesn’t care what gender you are.
Okay. But the women I’ve profiled in Built Different will tell you that’s only half the story. The program might not care. But the room where the program gets designed, the advisory council where feedback gets collected, the executive dinner where the real conversations happen? Those rooms care. And they’re still disproportionately full of the same people.
The EU just put €15 million behind the idea that systems need to change, not just attitudes. The US channel is still mostly operating on attitudes and hoping the systems catch up.
I’d love to be wrong about this. If your company is doing something structural (not a panel, not a LinkedIn post, but actual program-level change) to advance women in channel leadership, I want to hear about it. Reach out. I’ll write about it.
Because right now, Europe is building infrastructure. And we’re still building awareness. Those are different projects with different outcomes.