Property’s Gender Pay Gap Got Smaller Last Year, But Is Still Worse Than Most Sectors

The gap between the average pay of men and women in commercial real estate got smaller last year, but is still almost twice as large as the average for all companies across the UK.

UK companies with more than 250 staff are obliged by law to make public data on their gender pay gap. The data compares the average pay by gender of all roles collectively, and looks at the average difference between hourly pay rates and bonuses paid.

Bisnow used the data to create a sample of 36 commercial real estate firms that provided figures, stripping out housing associations and house builders.

The data shows that the mean difference between the hourly average rate of men and women in commercial real estate fell from 27% in 2017-2018 to 25.3%, when four companies that did not submit data for both years were removed from the sample.

Things were static when it came to bonuses, where the gap is bigger because of the higher proportion of men in the very highest jobs in the industry, which command the highest bonuses. The mean difference in bonus pay fell from 53.4% to 53.2%.

The proportion of women who receive a bonus rose from 61.4% to 65%, but the proportion of women in the top quartile of earners fell from 29.8% to 29.4%.

While real estate has improved, it is still worse than the UK corporate world as a whole, where the difference in hourly average wage is 14.2%, and the difference in bonus pay is 18.2%, about the same as last year. 

As with last year, The Crown Estate was a rare example where women are paid more than men, by a mean average of 5.6% per hour, principally because of a high proportion of women on the board. FirstPort Property Services was the only other company where women were paid more than men, by an average of 4.6%, although Canary Wharf Management came close to parity.

At the other end of the scale, the hourly average gender pay gap at JLL was the worst in the sector at 52%, albeit down from 58% last year. At BNP Paribas Real Estate, the gap rose from 42% to 50%.

St Modwen was the listed investor with the biggest pay gap, at 44%, although again this is an improvement on last year, when the gap was 52%. Intu was the listed investor with the smallest pay gap, at 9.7%, compared to 7.8% last year.