Tackling the gender pay gap in the real estate sector

Next year marks ten years of mandatory gender pay gap reporting in the UK. A decade on, the data for the real estate sector is familiar, and so is the frustration.

Progress has been made, but not at the pace any of us would like. Acknowledging this truth is essential if we are serious about closing the gap.

Equal pay and the gender pay gap are often conflated, but ultimately they represent different issues. Equal pay ensures two people doing the same job receive the same pay.

The gender pay gap is different; it measures representation, showing whether women are proportionally present at every level of an organisation. This is why gender pay gap figures are presented as a proportion of men's earnings.

Reporting uses two key metrics: mean and median. Mean pay reflects the average hourly pay gap and can be skewed by a small number of highly paid individuals. Median pay is less sensitive to outliers and provides a better view of the typical experience.

Many organisations in the sector are taking this challenge seriously. To drive meaningful change, it is important to share what is working across policy, culture and talent programmes, so that progress can accelerate across the wider industry.

In 2019, PwC described industry progress as muted. While this reflected the early stage of gender pay gap reporting, it also highlighted the gap between expectation and reality. 

Although Property Week reported a reduction in the mean pay gap in the industry to 28% in 2019, by 2022 it had risen to 31.88%. 

Progress since the introduction of mandatory gender pay gap reporting has been uneven, with progress evident in larger firms but limited across the industry as a whole.

In 2018, women in the real estate sector were earning approximately 61p for every £1 earned by men. By 2026, that has only increased to just over 70p.

The underlying driver has not changed; the gender pay gap is largely explained by structural imbalance.

Women remain under-represented in senior and higher-paid roles, while being over-represented in lower-paid roles or support functions. Until representation is more evenly distributed across all levels, the headline gap will persist.

This makes the challenge clear in principle but complex in delivery. Achieving parity requires sustained intervention across hiring, development, progression and retention.

At an overall level, the data is encouraging. Across the UK group, the mean gender pay gap has reduced to 7.7% and the median gap to 3.9%, with both measures improving year on year.

There has also been a significant reduction in bonus gaps, demonstrating progress not only in base pay but across total reward. 

However, the underlying distribution of roles continues to shape outcomes. Women remain under-represented in the highest-paid quartile and over-represented in the lowest.

In CBRE's advisory services business, for example, women accounted for 27% of the highest-paid quartile and 60% of the lowest. This distribution directly influences the pay gap, even where pay for comparable roles is equal.

The report also highlights the structural nature of the organisation. CBRE operates across advisory, investment management, and building operations and experience, each of which has distinct workforce compositions and gender balance.

Technical and operational roles, particularly within facility management, have historically seen a lower representation of women, while support functions often show the reverse.

The value of this data lies in understanding what sits beneath it; it shows where representation drops, progression slows and targeted intervention is required.

At CBRE, this has led to a focus on what is often described internally as the engine room of the business. This means looking at career stages and how investment today builds the leadership pipeline of tomorrow.

CBRE's approach centres on tracking representation, identifying pinch points and intervening early. It has been instrumental in reducing its mean pay gap from 14.7% (in 2021) to 7.7% (in 2025).

Many companies have invested in direct, reverse and cross-organisation mentoring initiatives. Industry bodies such as Real Estate Balance facilitate these programmes in various forms.

At CBRE, the career and promotion mentoring scheme run by the women's network supports more than 150 mentoring relationships each year, helping individuals prepare for career progression.

However, both research and internal data indicate that mentoring alone is not enough to drive change at scale. The distinction between mentoring and sponsorship is increasingly important.

Mentorship provides guidance and support. Sponsorship is different; it involves active advocacy, where senior leaders use their influence to create opportunities and support progression.

In 2025, analysis at CBRE led to the company introducing proportional representation tracking across recruitment and promotion. This tracking identified several consistent patterns.

Men were more likely to appear on talent maps. Women were present in shortlists but were not always progressing at the same rate as men. Access to sponsorship was often informal and shaped by existing networks.

Evidence from Payscale found that sponsored employees earn 11.6% more, and men still benefit more from sponsorship than women. When sponsorship is organised organically, it tends to replicate the status quo.

CBRE's response has been to make sponsorship more deliberate. By embedding sponsorship in leadership objectives and tracking outcomes, it becomes part of how leadership is measured. 

One practical step that any organisation can adopt is to embed the sponsorship of talent into senior executive annual objectives, holding leaders accountable for the development and promotion of the people that they sponsor.

This does not mean every sponsor must only back talent from under-represented groups; it means ensuring a measurable range of individuals benefit from active sponsorship.

Using internal data to understand proportional representation across the business and its processes has allowed CBRE to drive specific and meaningful interventions.

Its findings suggested that career visibility was a top priority for many women. Illustrating 'real' careers, navigating career frameworks and expanding individual networks early in their career have been key drivers.

Some examples include the following.

• Career and promotion mentoring scheme: a scheme providing targeted support for talent approaching the promotion process in the next two years. Mentees are matched with someone more senior (men or women) to help them navigate the process from start to finish, providing them with support from someone who has already been through the process. Feedback from participants reflects the scheme's impact, with one noting that 'the programme successfully addressed women's career barriers through targeted training, building confidence, skills, personal impact and connections'.
• Coffee roulette: an informal matching of hundreds of women across business lines and grades. The scheme ensures that younger talent broaden their network early in their career and meet women in different types of roles.
• The networking club: the networking club is a programme designed to support career progression, confidence in professional networking, personal brand and impact for early- and mid-career women. This scheme tackles the inequality in network opportunities that young women can face, in particular those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

To make real structural change, we must go beyond reporting on our data because we are required to and instead work to understand the gender pay gap and use that insight to rethink how things work.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows women spend on average 57 minutes more per day on unpaid work than men: roughly 338 hours a year.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) analysis confirms that women are more likely to work part time and carry a greater unpaid workload, which affects progression to and representation at senior levels.

To mitigate this impact, CBRE has undertaken a number of policy changes, including:

• enhancement of parental leave to support working families
• the introduction of childcare bursaries to ensure women are not disproportionately impacted by the cost of childcare
• paid carers' leave, predominantly for women, to mitigate unpaid caring as women are more likely to use their annual leave to fulfil caring responsibilities
• dedicated returners' support for women who are managing the return from maternity leave
• remuneration reviews and frameworks specifically relating to bonuses, ensuring fair financial support for women on maternity leave.

However, policy alone only goes so far. CBRE has also advocated for men becoming allies through the provision of visible role modelling, parenting conversations and maternity toolkits for line managers to ensure consistency.

Allyship is practical; it is about changing behaviours and expectations in the workplace so that family responsibilities do not become a career penalty. 

Practical steps for leaders include:

• regular proportional representation reviews of recruitment and promotion
• measurable sponsorship targets in executive objectives
• routine audits of policy application to ensure consistency across line managers. 

These are not optional extras; they are part of running a modern, competitive business.

Success means parity in representation at every level, not just a headline reduction in the mean or median gender pay gap. It is seeing women in senior leadership in proportion to the talent pool.

Moreover, success is ensuring that promotion rates are equitable and making career pathways transparent and repeatable.

The next phase of tackling this issue concerns turning momentum into parity at every level. This requires sustained effort and leaders who are prepared to be measured on the outcomes for the people they sponsor and develop.

The gender pay gap is not going away quickly, but we should not give up.

Real change comes from measured and repeatable actions, using data to find the pinch points, holding leaders accountable for developing diverse talent and embedding policies that make careers possible for everyone.

Sometimes all it takes to get the ball rolling is an individual raising their hand to suggest a new initiative or scheme.

Understanding and learning from our own data is an important point for every organisation to reflect on.