Launch of real estate industry diversity campaign

November 2, 2017 / Keith Osborne
Launch of real estate industry diversity campaign

A new campaign to promote a more diverse approach to the workforce in real estate was launched at an event last night and has been strongly backed by a group of business leaders in the sector.

‘CEO Commitments for Diversity’, spearheaded by the organisation Real Estate Balance and launched at the British Property Federation annual dinner, sets out 10 actions to bring about a gender balance in senior and leadership positions throughout the property industry, with each signatory taking personal responsibility for implementing it in their business.

The report, supported by close to 50 senior industry figures on launch, follows a Real Estate Balance survey of nearly 400 professionals across genders in 2016, conducted with PwC. It saw that only 11% of women considering their company dealt well with gender issues and 80% of women working in the real estate industry believing that dealing with the long-standing gender issues is a vital issue to bring about job satisfaction.

Vivienne King, chair of Real Estate Balance, says: “The property industry has come a long way in embracing diversity, but we have still further to go. Women are better represented in property than ever before, and yet, with a few notable exceptions, virtually all the leadership positions in our sector are held by men.

“Real Estate Balance wants to address this imbalance and the CEO Commitments for Diversity are a significant step towards shifting the dial in promoting diversity throughout the property sector. It’s an exciting, bold initiative taken by the signatories and clear evidence of the determination for change that is being driven at board level by both men and women. If widely adopted, as we hope they will be, this has the potential to support transformation in the sector creating a pipeline of women to fill our senior positions.”

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