Women In Real Estate Say It’s Time To Be Disruptors To End The Status Quo

For all the talk about increased gender diversity in UK real estate, the data is clear: Over the past decade, at the top level, things haven’t gotten any better. The time for a different type of action might have come. 

“I think there is an invitation in today's world for women to be disruptors,” Goldman Sachs Managing Director Ana Estrada told an audience of more than 400 at Bisnow’s UK Women Leading Real Estate event. 

“If you're just submissive to the system, if you just do everything everybody expects you to do, the chances are you'll get very tired, you'll get very frustrated, and you’ll burn out.”

The event, hosted at Henderson Park and Hilton’s London Metropole Hotel, was held the same morning Real Estate Balance dropped its biennial survey of gender and wider diversity in UK property.

“It’s hard not to be disheartened by some of the results — particularly the gender balance at senior levels,” Real Estate Balance Managing Director Sue Brown wrote in a statement accompanying the survey.

It found that in the eight years it has been gathering data, the proportion of senior leadership roles in UK property occupied by women has fallen from 32% to 26%.

The findings come despite the fact that at the middle management level, the industry is more balanced: 61% male versus 39% female.

The issue is not the pipeline of talent, according to the survey, which also found that UK property is less ethnically diverse and more privileged than UK society generally. 

Panellists at the event outlined some of the issues still facing women in CRE looking to get ahead and some of the individual strategies they have utilised to combat them. They also discussed the structural changes companies and the broader industry must make to achieve parity. 

“The double standard is real because we are assessed differently [to men]. It's due to the bias,” Henderson Park Managing Director Ioanna Paschalidou said. 

Paschalidou recalled instances of being called aggressive when adopting a similar tone of voice to male colleagues at points in her career and being talked over or ignored in meetings. 

Salesforce Regional Vice President for Built Environment Yalda Gerami gave the example of turning up for a meeting and being taken for an executive assistant by her counterpart. 

Speakers at the event offered multiple strategies for how women in UK property can push against issues they face: Build your network as widely as possible among other women as well as men to create a mutually beneficial support system, and within your company, foster as many deep one-to-one relationships as possible since those who know you well are less likely to dismiss or talk over you. 

“In all my jobs, I got feedback,” Paschalidou said.

“The feedback may have not always been what I wanted to hear, but I took it on board,” she said, adding that it is also important to stay true to yourself. 

Continuous learning and not thinking about careers being on consistently upward linear paths are useful in making it to senior management, panellists said.

“Everything I've done has been thinking about where you can learn by moving sideways if you have to,” Thriving Investments CEO Cath Webster said. “It doesn't always have to be up, and that just expands your horizons and it expands your knowledge, which you can then use to then grow and be a better leader and a better employee.”

Employers are looking for hard and fast real estate skills, but emotional intelligence is increasingly valued in a world where computers can do a lot of the analytical work required to be successful. 

“It’s a superpower,” Salesforce’s Gerami said. “You don’t have to be the loudest person in the room, the one banging the table anymore.”

Goldman’s Estrada reiterated her call for women in real estate to change the sector rather than letting it change them.

“All the women we hire, they're top of their class, and yet, many times a few years into the job, they just won't say anything in the meeting,” she said. “They'll just adhere to the system. They think the system tells them to do that, but actually, the system doesn't care that much. The system just wants great productivity, great investment ideas, great results.”

Saying what you really think will get you ahead and also save your sanity, she said.

But the use of the word “system” is crucial in the conversation. Highlighting strategies women can use to fight bias is important, but it is also about asking individuals to solve a systemic, structural problem — and including the individuals who suffer because of them. 

“It's not an effort of one person or just the firm. It’s a collective effort,” Paschalidou said.

She cited structural issues like shared parental leave as vital to getting women back into the workforce after having children — and not just offering it but also creating a culture where men can take parental leave without stigma. 

Coaching women and people from backgrounds outside the property world on how to make senior management is also key, the panellists said, adding it's not enough to presume talented people will be able to rise up the ranks. Webster added that having clear objectives that staff can see and understand to achieve promotion is vital, an issue flagged in studies of the real estate industry in the past.

“That way, it's very clear that it's not done in side rooms or it's not done because you look like the person that's promoting you,” she said. 

Real Estate Balance said that both the individuals and companies it surveyed agreed that the best way to increase diversity in the industry is to link management pay to achieving diversity targets.

Despite companies saying this is a good strategy, it remains rare in real estate.