COMMENT It has been shocking to see recent figures showing how little progress has been made in closing the UK’s gender pay gap since reporting became mandatory in 2017.
At 9.4%, the 2022-23 gender pay gap – the difference in the average median hourly pay received by men and women – remains the same as it was five years ago, with about 80% of employers across today’s economy awarding higher average pay to men.
According to analysis by The Times, the construction and financial service industries reported the joint-second worst pay gap in the UK after education – meaning that a woman working in these sectors earns on average about 78p for every pound earned by a man.
With a 2022-23 median gender pay gap of 8%, real estate isn’t the worst offender, and yet although some progress is being made, there’s clearly work still left to do.
This tallies with the anecdotal feedback I’ve been receiving over the last 12 months, whether out talking to property professionals at MIPIM or working with real estate organisations to progress their diversity, equality and inclusion performance.
Where do the solutions lie?
Pay gap reporting has been hugely important in exposing one measure of gender inequality, making companies more accountable and laying the disparity out for everyone to see. But what steps should organisations be taking to address this and other imbalances – and where do the solutions lie?
Real Estate Balance has long been driven by the belief that robust, granular data is a vital starting point in addressing inequalities, which is why we’ve been carrying out our own survey of the entire industry every two years since 2016 – around the same time that gender pay gap reporting began.
By going deep into the sector – investigating company and employee responses across a wide range of DEI measures including gender, ethnicity and social mobility via our two anonymous surveys – we have built a strong evidence base that enables us to track progress, uncover key DEI issues and identify where change is needed most.
Senior roles
One area we look at is gender equality across all levels of an organisation. Over time, the results show that while gender representation is improving at support staff level, with a slight improvement at board level, the gap between middle management and senior leadership is worsening over time. This suggests that, generally, women are over-represented in junior and lower-paid roles and under-represented in senior and higher-paid roles.
The findings raise some important questions, such as whether female representation at senior leadership level has been neglected at the expense of board representation, and if the industry is doing enough to develop and retain the female talent that exists at middle management level.
The 2022 results also show that around 15% of company respondents do not track gender equality currently and have no plans to do so in future, suggesting that a culture shift is still badly needed in certain pockets of our industry.
Advice and guidance
Last year, we released a guide to collecting DEI data in partnership with PwC, which provides advice and guidance to help companies understand their diversity data beyond the gender pay gap, enabling them to deeply understand the DEI trends within their organisations. This rich data allows for more focused planning and measurable targets, and will ultimately help gender equality to become a reality in our industry.
If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to read our 2022 survey report and DEI data collection guide. By examining the issues in detail and establishing where the inequalities lie, and by working with our network of 100-plus members, we’re continuing to take every opportunity to demonstrate the business case for diversity and accelerate the pace of change.
And if the latest gender pay gap data tells us anything, it’s clear to me that this mission is far from over.
Sue Brown is managing director of Real Estate Balance
