Whenever I go to a female-focused real estate event I am eager to connect with other women in my industry and hear from those at the top of the real estate game. I hope for honest discourse on how society and the property industry can shift its views about women in the workplace.
Unfortunately, this is rarely what I get. I take notes on the sessions I attend, and the line that perhaps best sums up my general reaction to these conferences is this: “Why is the conversation about how women can unsustainably push ourselves to better play within a system that wasn’t designed for us, and not about how to fix that system in the first place?”
At a recent event, within the first 10 minutes we were told that women were passed up for a chief executive role because the best candidate was simply a man, how women need to “have a brand”, and that when it comes to parenting while working, we should keep pushing ourselves even if we aren’t really coping.
Instead, we should have been asking what causes men to be considered the best candidates. We should reflect on the professional pipeline that’s predisposed to support men, and how to reorganise this so there are equally successful numbers of women CEO candidates.
We need to ask ourselves why women need a brand, but men don’t.
We need to talk about why maternity leave is still a woman’s problem, because society still sees it as a woman’s job to raise children and the man’s job to pay the bills. Because guess what? This system limits men, too.
Speaking of men, where were they when the advice was being dished out? We should be calling men into this conversation, inviting them to discuss how gender equality helps everyone and equipping them with the tools to speak up when they see others perpetuating a broken system of sexism.
I’d like to be clear about one thing: this is not about the women who speak at these events and what they say or don’t say. I am calling them in to do better, not as women, but as leaders, and this includes the organisations that create these panels and decide the questions and topics talked about within.
As a society we need to flip the script. It is not about women pushing ourselves at unsustainable rates just to keep up with our male counterparts. It’s about looking at why society asks this of women, but not of men, in the first place.
Chas Ochalek is based in London and has worked within the European property industry for the last four years.
International Women’s Day takes place on 8 March.
