EDITOR’S COMMENT Last week I pondered on progress and how far we might have come as an industry and pointed to gender pay gap reports as a possible indicator. I also, thankfully, said I wouldn’t be holding my breath.
The good news is that the gender pay gap is slowly moving inwards; the bad news is that real estate still lags behind the wider business world. And perhaps more concerning is that the companies we should hold up as leaders in our industry lag the wider real estate sector, and by some measure.
What the figures really hammer home is that there continues to exist in real estate roles that either aren’t attractive to women or just aren’t open to them. Most of these positions are in revenue-generating, bonus-focused roles such as capital markets or leadership and C-suite positions.
Bonus gaps this year were pretty eye-watering. Across those 22 “leaders” in real estate, almost 60% saw their bonus gaps increase year-on-year. And among those that reported an increase in that gap, the move outwards averaged 12.2 percentage points. For those that improved the gap, the average nudge in was 7.6 percentage points, leaving a 4.6pp delta.
Not a single firm within those 22 had a bonus gap in single figures and only Canary Wharf Group was able to boast a gap of less than 20% at 16.5%. And, unluckily for some, 13 had bonus gaps of more than 50%, with five – unsurprisingly all in the consultancy sector – having bonus gaps of more than 70%.
Why those bonus gaps are so big and are refusing to move is well known.
“We believe the main reason for our large bonus gap is due to the reduction in gender diversity as the job level increases and due to there being a larger proportion of men in property roles which attract higher salaries (and therefore higher bonus outcomes) than our non-property roles”, says Landsec.
“Our bonus gap also remains significant and variable, with no reliable trend towards closure. We believe this is partly because of our gender imbalance in leadership roles, but also because most of our agency roles are occupied by men, which are more heavily remunerated through bonuses than other positions more heavily occupied by women,” adds Bidwells.
“Analysing our data tells us our gender pay gap is driven by two factors: first, women are under-represented at the most senior levels of Knight Frank; second, they are under-represented in revenue-driving roles”, admits Knight Frank.
And on it goes. Followed with pledges of “leading the charge” on equitable futures and recognising that the onus lies on leaders to drive change. I really want to believe those pledges, but the data is convincing me otherwise. Even Landsec’s explanation of its bonus gap growth being that the previous year’s smaller figure was an exception, with one female executive getting a big sign-on, shouldn’t really be an excuse. It shouldn’t be “exceptional”.
In too many surveys – our LGBTQ+ survey, our ethnic diversity survey – it has been revealed that there is a real issue in capital markets and the fee-driven parts of our market. They are not open. They are exclusive and they are holding our sector back when it comes to EDI.
If real estate is committed to becoming an industry that is open to all, and attracts and retains the very best talent from every corner of the human spectrum, it needs to not just pledge and recognise, but to take real action on change and start with the most difficult bit first.
But until the data starts to show us otherwise, this champion of yours may well be losing a little bit of her fighting spirit.
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