Where Are the Women? The Leadership Gap in Real Estate

Women dominate the real estate industry—so why are we still missing from leadership lists? It’s list season, and once again, the top names in real estate leadership are overwhelmingly male. 

In this episode, we dive into:

• The leadership gap – Why women are outperforming in real estate but still underrepresented at the top.
•  Old boys’ club culture – How leadership lists are often built within exclusive networks that overlook women.
•  The self-promotion struggle – Why women hesitate to nominate themselves (and why that needs to change).
•  Media bias & visibility issues – How the same names keep showing up while incredible women go unrecognized.
•  The real definition of success – Why women prioritize impact, balance, and ROI over ego-driven metrics.
•  How we change the narrative – From nominating more women to building our own tables, it’s time to take up space.

Success isn’t just about sales volume—it’s about building wealth, impact, and a life on your terms. If you’re tired of the same old names running the show, this episode is for you.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Disparity in Real Estate Leadership Recognition
• 13:57 Empowering Women in Real Estate
• 19:27 Empowering Women in Real Estate Networking

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hello, hello, hello, welcome everyone. I am really excited and fired up to talk about the topic today, which is where are all of the women and why leadership lists in real estate are still missing us, because it is definitely something that gets me a little hot under the collar, to be honest. It is list season and we are starting to see all of the top leaders in real estate lists drop, but why are women substantially missing from these lists? Let's be real Women are crushing it in real estate. They are outperforming, out-earning and outlasting so many other people. So where is that recognition? In this episode, I want to jump into why women are missing from leadership lists, how the industry is holding us back and what we can do to potentially fix this and claim our space at the top. I want to start with a story and oh my gosh, I have so many of these, but this one really stood out to me when I was crafting this podcast outline.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Two-ish years ago, I was at a leadership roundtable in DC and this was all. The CEOs, all of the big leaders across the country, were coming to this roundtable and I remember texting my husband that I was only one of 10 women in the room, and there were probably about 150 to 200 attendees, but the lack of female leadership in that room was palpable. I was the only woman sitting at my round table and there was about 10 people there and I remember this brokerage owner leans over to me and he introduces himself. I say, oh hey, I'm Lindsay Dreyer with City Chic Real Estate. And the first thing out of his mouth was do only women work at your brokerage? I was so flabbergasted but luckily I came back with a quick comeback. I said no, why would you say that? Because I'm a woman and I said it loud enough. So everyone at my table heard me and it was a awkward moment. You could hear a pin drop and this man could not handle that. He got called out. He gets in defensive mode and is like oh, I mean, I didn't mean offense by it. And I said I didn't take offense by it. I just thought it was an inappropriate question. Should I ask do only men work at your brokerage because you're a man? And basically that conversation was shut down then.

Speaker 1: 3:20

That is just one of so many stories where I was underestimated as a female leader of a brokerage and I'm not going to dive into all of them today, but I really do want to talk about this disparity in our industry, on lack of female leadership and why there's not more recognition of us on these lists. You probably know this Women make up the majority of real estate agents, but we really are only a fraction of the executives, brokerage owners, prop tech especially so. For those of you that don't know, proptech is like technology and real estate and the thought leaders that are featured on power lists. I want to get into this disconnect of why aren't top performing agents and business owners getting the recognition that they deserve, and I have a lot of thoughts on this. I don't think this is going to be a problem that we solve today, unfortunately, but I do feel like, little by little, we move the needle on getting the recognition that women in this industry deserve.

Speaker 1: 4:32

Let's dive in to the barriers that I feel like are keeping women off of these lists and getting recognition. Number one is that we still have a old boys club culture in leadership and these leadership lists, these top lists, are often created by and for a specific network of men or just a specific network of men or just a specific network of people If you are not visible to this particular network or good old boys club, then you are not going to make an appearance on these lists. The next thing comes down to just how women are. In general, women don't self-promote as aggressively as men. We are not looking for that external validation all of the time, and because women are not seeking that visibility as much as men, men are more likely to be nominated or nominate themselves or get nominated by their peers. So I know so many women who do not nominate themselves for things and they're like well, I just think that's weird, that's feeding my ego, that's being cocky.

Speaker 1: 5:49

No, if there is a nomination process and you are allowed to nominate yourself, throw your hat in the ring, not only just in real estate, but it has been shown by studies and studies and studies that women don't take as many risks as men, and so we see ourselves not nominating as basically taking this huge risk putting ourselves out there, not necessarily liking to brag about ourselves, but we need to be throwing our hat in these rings if we want to make a difference in this industry. So if you don't feel comfortable nominating yourself, have your friend nominate you. Have a peer who is your cheerleader in the real estate industry? Nominate you, because we need to get these nominations in order to become more visible to the people that are creating these lists. So it is not cocky, it is not bad to promote yourself, because you need to get that promotion to make a difference and show people that women can be leaders, women can be in leadership positions Kind of piggybacking on the fact that women don't promote themselves as aggressively as men.

Speaker 1: 7:02

That leads to a lack of visibility and also a media bias. So women are not being spotlighted the same way that men are in our industry publications. I don't know about you, but I feel like it's the same names, the same tired advice, the same over and over and over again and honestly, it's up to us to try to break in and give people another choice, like show them that there's another way, show them that there are more people that they can be highlighting. When we don't see women in our media and when we don't see women in our media and when we are not visible, this basically helps perpetuate the silence and the disappearance of women in lists in the media and it makes us less visible. We need to be more visible in order to change the conversation and change what's going on in our industry.

Speaker 1: 8:02

The next point is that women tend to not be egomaniacs and I'm not saying all men are egomaniacs, but women tend to lead differently. We really don't care about the external validation. We aren't caring about anything outside of us, just leading our teams, and we absolutely want to take care of our people. Where we prioritize collaboration, we also are prioritizing work-life balance, which I'll get into in a little bit. We are all about impact over ego-driven metrics. So personally I could care less what my sales volume is, how many homes we've sold, any of those ego-driven metrics. I personally care about my team having a great life, making enough money to support that life and finding ways that we can collaborate and also support them. And it's not about more, more, more, more, more. And I really think that women are leading the charge in shifting that perspective of it's not just about sales volume, it's not just about home sold, it's not just about those ego driven metrics. It really is about a holistic approach to leadership and I think a lot of times that isn't recognized because it's just not easy to measure. So if it's not easy to measure, it's staying off the lists. And this brings me to my last reason, and I actually think that this is the number one reason why we do not see more women in leadership roles or on these leadership lists.

Speaker 1: 9:49

Women are keenly aware of time and energy return on investment. If we are investing time in something, we are expecting to see a high return on investment. If we are investing our energy, we want to see an ROI. Not just that, but we want to know with certainty that if we invest this time and energy into something, it's going to pay back, it's going to reap us rewards. So I think that opting out of leadership, opting out of the management track, is a way that women stay in control of their return on energy and time investment.

Speaker 1: 10:30

There's something called the motherhood penalty, which you may have heard of, but it's basically this earnings gap or this career growth gap that continues until a child reaches 10 years old. Now I know for me personally, I have three children, three under the age of nine. So that means that every time one of my children was born, that motherhood penalty started over again. So I have basically been in this motherhood penalty gap for a very long time and it is probably going to continue for the next six years. So after 10 years and that child reaches 10 years of age. That motherhood penalty gap will narrow, but it never completely disappears.

Speaker 1: 11:17

So what does this mean for women in real estate? I know for me it means that I'm investing my time and energy where it has the biggest payoff, and for most real estate agents that is sales. It is not management, it is not leadership. They're also not going to put their success in the hands of unpredictable or unsupportive leadership, which is often male. So I know that I'm not going to invest my time and energy into a unpredictable leadership role, because I could just invest that same time and energy into a real estate career that's under completely my control. I'm at 1099, it's my own business and I can probably work less and make more money. So this is the calculus that women are evaluating every single day, because we have a finite time and energy bandwidth. That's just facts. Women and all humans have limited time and energy. So I think and again, this is my opinion, but I think because I have lived it, I know I can speak to it is that women are opting out of leadership track because they have a higher return on investment by just being a real estate agent and selling homes.

Speaker 1: 12:41

So, that having been said, I would love to talk about how do we change this narrative or how do we start to get more women in leadership, or how can we increase visibility of women in leadership. The first and I think I've already kind of touched on it is that visibility is everything. We need to make examples of women leaders more visible. We need to celebrate them, we need to amplify them and we need to tell their stories, because they are very unique stories. They're very different stories Because women are optimizing around time and energy. It's a different story. We're not optimizing around sales volume. We're not optimizing around gross commissions. We're not optimizing around gross commissions. We're not optimizing around number of homes sold. We're truly optimizing around return on time and energy investment. And showing the very different ways that women are succeeding in this business is so important because it is so varied. It's part of why I started my coaching company, happy Agent Co. Because I wanted to support women in building holistic success, really honing in on that time and energy investment return that is so crucial to having a happy life in business.

Speaker 1: 13:58

The next way we can make an impact is to just nominate more women whether that's yourself, whether that's your colleagues but really submit them for awards, leadership lists, speaking engagements of women leadership doing it their way. That is so important. Just representation is so crucial to moving the needle on this. I also think we need to change how we're keeping score and I'll be honest, I don't know exactly how that's going to look, but I think it really goes beyond sales volume, it goes beyond number of homes sold and it looks at impact. It looks at who's changing the narrative, who is fighting the status quo, who's finding success on their own terms, and that's empowerment.

Speaker 1: 14:52

I feel like the industry doesn't want us to talk about that, because our industry survives on sales volume and number of homes sold and gross commissions, survives on sales volume and number of homes sold and gross commissions. That is how shareholders of the brokerages, that is how brokerage owners keep score. It's all about profit, so they don't want to show other ways that people are finding success beyond those metrics. But I think it's important we start showing success beyond those metrics, because success is defined by you. You define success.

Speaker 1: 15:24

For me, it's making enough money so I can live an incredible life with my family. I have the freedom to travel. I have the freedom to participate in my hobbies, spend time with my friends. I don't need to be on a list to make the most money or the most sales volume, because I know for me I'm going to have to sacrifice things that are just not worth sacrificing, and I have a feeling there's a lot of women out there that are in the same boat. We would love to be recognized, but what we realize is that we are making a damn good living, we are providing for our families and we are still showing up for them and for ourselves on a regular basis, and that is the definition of success. So cheers. Even if you're not a list, I just want to give you some props.

Speaker 1: 16:14

The next thing that I feel like we could do to change the situation is to make corporate environments more women-friendly, more family-friendly. This includes really great parental family leave benefits. It also includes daycare, maybe even daycare on site, but some credits for that. Just providing flexible work arrangements as well. When you have a sick kid at home, being a realtor absolutely trumps being in leadership at a brokerage because you have that flexibility. So those corporate environments just are not conducive to being a woman, and a lot of times if a woman is putting her family first, that's frowned upon, that is not supported and that, basically is someone who is not going to opt in to that leadership track, to that management track, because she wants to put her family first, and corporate America does not allow women to do that easily.

Speaker 1: 17:19

I also want you to own your wins, which I know is a really hard thing for women to do. We need to be unapologetic about our definition of success and also promoting ourselves. You are amazing, you kick ass and it's okay to talk about it because we need those examples out there. We need to see that there is a mom with three children doing the damn thing and making $300,000 and still being able to show up fully for herself and for her family. So owning your wins, owning your definition of success, is so crucial. And, lastly, I think we need to be building our own tables. I love that there's the Woman Up Conference. I know there's a lot of other women that are building their own tables. If we don't make spaces where women can be honest and collaborate on what issues are impacting us, we're not going to make a difference and we're not going to move the needle again. We need to create our own recognition, we need to create our own platforms and we need to create our own metrics on how we are measuring success, and I just think that that is so important to changing the narrative.

Speaker 1: 18:37

I have a few challenges for you, so the first is the next time you see an opportunity to nominate someone for an award or a leadership opportunity, go and do it. If it's yourself, just do it. If it's one of your colleagues or your friends, do it Also. I really want you to own one win today. Share that success, even if it feels vulnerable, and step into it. Just feel it. I know it's hard sometimes, but just feel that success. Own that win and share it. It doesn't have to be on social media. Share it with your friends, share it with your family, but we need to start thinking of our businesses in a way where we're proud of ourselves, because that's part of how we're going to change. This is being proud of ourselves, and we have a lot to be proud of.

Speaker 1: 19:27

I also think that you can plug into any networking opportunities designed for women in real estate. So, whether that's a specifically woman in real estate group, facebook groups, conferences, start looking for those opportunities and if there are any men listening which I hope there are, this isn't just for the ladies. Promote the women in your sphere. It is important for men to be allies in this fight to have more women leadership recognized in our industry. I want to close on this let's make it impossible for us to ignore women in real estate. The real estate industry thrives because of women, and that is facts. We are the majority of real estate agents and it is time that leadership lists reflect that.