Whose fault is it that there is a lack of women in the real estate industry? I’m going to say it is entirely our own. This is not a man’s world anymore, so why do we keep behaving like it is?
I attended a Women in Planning event recently at which three strong – but massively different – women spoke about the role of females in the built environment (p93). The three women were all presidents (or presidents in waiting) of some the industry’s most influential bodies – the RICS, RIBA and the RTPI – and were an example of how there is no role in the industry that cannot be held by a woman.
But why are numbers in the industry still so low? Female membership of the RICS, for example, is around 13%. That’s rubbish. Of the three bodies, the RTPI had the highest proportion of women members at 35%. But let’s face it, that is still ridiculously low. Especially when, according to the latest End of Cycle report from UCAS, women continue to outnumber men in higher education. It found that women were a third more likely than men to continue their education beyond school in 98% of areas across the UK and in almost a quarter of areas they were 50% more likely to do so.
So, if the girls are getting the knowledge, why aren’t we showing it off?
The theme that came out of the WiP event was a lack of confidence. For some reason many of the women in the room did not feel confident enough to just go for it. If they thought they could only do 50% of a job on offer they wouldn’t give it a go for fear of failure. Men, on the other hand, said the women on the panel, thought that if they could do 50% of the job on offer, they were probably over qualified. It was a joke, but potentially not too far off the truth.
But what’s worse than a lack of confidence in ability among women is the lack of confidence to be themselves.
This week one of the many strong, powerful women on the Estates Gazette team met George W Bush’s former economic adviser Pippa Malmgren. As you will see from our fascinating interview on page 42, Malmgren is fierce – in the powerful sense of the word and the Tyra Banks-inspired sense. Brains and beauty. But she felt she couldn’t be both in the White House.
“Looking back I realise the sacrifice I made as a woman to succeed in Washington. I completely turned off my femininity,” says Malmgren. “I remember that I chose to turn it off until later in my career when my credentials were so solid that no one could challenge me. It is scary now I look back that I felt I wasn’t permitted to operate in feminine mode until I was so protected by my achievements that no one could throw a punch.”
While Malmgren’s story is unique in as much as few, if any, of us will get to advise one of the world’s most controversial leaders on major terrorist attacks and the collapse of global corporations, her feelings about being a women in business are probably not.
But the change has to start with us. The women in the industry have to seize every opportunity that comes their way. Who cares if you are not sure if you can do it? The Coal Board thought RICS president Louise Brooke-Smith couldn’t be a mining engineer – but reckoned the fictional Mr Brooke-Smith could (p102). She showed the board, after it was forced to apologise, that she could be much, much more.
So, my message to the women in property, before I hand back this page, is borrowed from Coco Chanel: keep your head, heels and standards high. And here’s to more women at the top.
