Executive Summary
Authors:
Manuela Galetto, Associate professor of Employment relations, Industrial Relations Research Unit, Warwick Business School, email: Manuela.galetto@wbs.ac.uk
Fuk Ying Tse, Assistant professor in Organisation, Work and Employment, Department of Management, University of Birmingham, f.y.tse@bham.ac.uk
This research is the result of a collaboration with Maria Augusta Wiedner, CEO of Real Estate Women (https://rewomen.org/). Maria invited us to look at the Real Estate sector and generously made her network and experience available for an in-depth analysis of the dynamics inside this extremely composite industry.
Our research examines the implementation and impact of Gender Pay Gap (GPG) reporting in the UK Real Estate sector since its introduction in 2017. Through 15 interviews with 19 professionals (HR and practitioners in the corporate RE sector), two roundtables, and sector events, mainly between 2022 and 2024, the study explores how organisations navigate the GPG reporting process, what actions they take to address disparities, and the effectiveness of transparency as a mechanism for reducing gender inequality.
Key Findings
The Reporting Process: A Learning Journey
The GPG reporting process has been challenging for many organisations. As one practitioner noted, it has been a “trial-and-error process” requiring collaboration across multiple teams. The technical complexity of determining what constitutes “pay” has created significant difficulties, with one respondent observing that “the report is simple to run, but sometimes there are anomalies in it and we’re not always quite sure what they mean.”
A critical limitation identified is timing: published figures are always one year behind, creating frustration as “the numbers are always one year in arrears.” This lag interferes with newer EDI initiatives and undermines the relevance of published data.
Limited Internal Communication and Engagement
Internal communication of GPG reports remains surprisingly limited. While reports are shared with senior management and boards, broader workforce engagement is minimal. One interviewee candidly stated that “the straight answer to your question is that really the bulk of employees are not engaged in responding or commenting on the Gender Pay Gap Report.”
Organisations often struggle to explain the difference between GPG and equal pay, with HR professionals finding themselves having to “reassure management that equal pay is in place” rather than driving deeper conversations about structural inequality.
Actions Taken: Peripheral Rather Than Structural
The research reveals a pattern of peripheral interventions rather than fundamental changes to pay structures. Common actions include women’s leadership programs, enhanced maternity leave, mentoring initiatives, and flexible working arrangements. However, as one respondent noted, gender inequality remains “a sort of accepted situation.”
Critically, no organisations reported modifying their pay structures themselves, despite evidence that “pay structures and in particular the varying combinations of fixed and variable elements play a key role in the gender pay gap.” One company acknowledged that achieving zero GPG would require giving “all women in the organisation a 25% pay rise” – a change no organisation was prepared to make.
Recruitment efforts focus heavily on diversifying candidate pools, but progress from diverse shortlists to diverse placements remains elusive. Head-hunters report that BME candidates increasingly ask whether they are being invited to the interview as the “show pony” rather than as genuine contenders.
The Business Case Versus Social Justice
The UK’s voluntarist system (laissez faire approach to employment relations, that minimises binding regulation) prioritises the business case for diversity over legislative mandates. This approach shows significant limitations. A recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Management indicate that two-thirds of managers believe gender-balanced leadership is unnecessary for future challenges, and one-third think “there is already too much effort going into gender equality policies.” The research identified three broad perspectives on gender inequality:
- resignation that it will persist in the current system;
- mild faith that policies trigger necessary discussions;
- and diminishing tolerance toward continued diversity efforts.
Sector-Specific Dynamics
The Real Estate sector presents unique challenges due to its composite nature, encompassing everything from surveyors to contractors to facilities maintenance. This diversity makes “comparing like with like” particularly difficult, as an interviewee said about RE companies. No significant sector-wide coordination or guidance was found, though individual organisations consistently monitor competitors’ figures and participate in voluntary initiatives like “Changing the Face of Property.”
Organisations working closely with public authorities or member-owned structures demonstrated greater accountability, with one noting that change happens when “a local authority client that we do a lot of work for does require it”, rather than through industry body recommendations.
The Effectiveness Spectrum: From Cynics to Optimists
Interviewees expressed views ranging across what we like to define as an “optimism continuum.” At the cynical end, practitioners recognised that “because of the complexity of this and all the things I said at the beginning around, you have to explain it in such a way you can use, if you chose to there can be lot of smoke and mirrors.” The complexity and ambiguity of the reporting provide companies with a platform to claim they are doing all they can while avoiding fundamental, structural change for example to their pay structures.
More optimistic respondents valued the reporting as prompting necessary conversations. One noted that “data give you an ammunition to identify where the issues lie,” while another observed that “it’s helping us have those kinds of conversations I mentioned earlier at the board about how we increase female representation in the business.”
A particularly hopeful perspective suggested that momentum is building: “the cracks in the machine are starting to appear… It is out of the bag. There’s no putting it back in there again. And there’s a lot of things that people will not unsee, unhear and a lot of people are becoming much more emboldened.”
Critical Gaps
Several fundamental issues remain unaddressed:
- No structural pay reforms: Organisations focus on representation rather than examining whether jobs performed predominantly by women are systematically undervalued
- Pay secrecy persists: HR and executives remain alone in the unique position to monitor pay trends, with no broader transparency obligation nor union involvement
- Leadership commitment varies: While often claimed, genuine endorsement is “rarely demonstrated,” and organisations risk “setting women up to fail” through clumsy promotion practices
- Short-term thinking: The business case approach means equality initiatives are “quickly dropped” without clear evidence of business benefits
Conclusion
The research reveals that while GPG reporting has prompted important conversations, it has not driven the fundamental structural changes needed to close gender pay gaps. As one practitioner summarised, achieving real change would require “something more…with more teeth around equal pay reporting.”
The reporting has become another compliance exercise – necessary for reputation management and client expectations – but insufficient to challenge the underlying dynamics that perpetuate gender inequality in the Real Estate sector. Organisations focus on increasing female representation at senior levels while avoiding harder questions about pay structures, job evaluation, and the systematic undervaluation of women’s work.
The bonus GPG is particularly high in the sector and would deserve closer investigation (e.g. around how bonuses are designed, with what consequences for different groups of workers, etc.) but we know from the literature that with discretion comes also greater discrimination.
Five years into mandatory reporting, the evidence suggests that transparency alone, without enforcement mechanisms or deeper structural interventions, produces important conversation but limited transformation.
Given the interest in the topic from the experts and practitioners we interviewed, here is an essential readings list. We are always happy to receive comments and expressions of interest in the study, as we continued researching it.
MG and FYT
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