While headlines around CREW Network’s 2025 Benchmark Study are centered mainly on the stubbornness of the gender pay gap in commercial real estate, a deeper look at the report reveals equally critical insights into how the industry is structured and who fills its various roles.
The report’s demographic and structural data lay bare not only the pay inequities but also the organizational makeup of contemporary CRE, with particular attention to the distribution of women across specializations—a lens that reveals both progress and persistent challenges.
The CREW Network study, conducted over the first months of 2025, drew on responses from 2,450 commercial real estate professionals, the majority of them women. This robust sample provides a clear view of where women are working within the sector. While they now account for an estimated 38 percent of the industry’s overall workforce—the figure that has remained essentially flat for two decades. Their distribution across specializations is anything but uniform.
The most prominent finding is that women are most likely to be found in financial and professional services, where 42 percent of female respondents indicated primary involvement. Categories such as accounting, finance, law and marketing collectively formed the backbone of the group's participation within the commercial real estate sector—far outpacing male peers for whom development is the principal area of concentration.
In contrast to the steady female presence in finance and professional services, brokerage, sales and leasing remain dominated by men, with women accounting for just 31 percent in these fields. Asset management, however, is one specialization where the gap is closing, with women representing 43 percent of the workforce and moving closer to gender parity.
Development and finance, too, are converging toward the industry average in terms of women’s participation, though neither has shifted enough to mark a substantive breakthrough. One notable trend highlighted in the study is the overall decline in respondents working in finance and asset management since 2020, balanced by a rise in real estate development roles—signaling an evolving landscape where the opportunity for further shifts in demographic representation remains open.
Further breakdowns by asset class show that women are most commonly involved in office properties, with 55 percent reporting this specialization, just under the 62 percent reported by men. Multifamily, retail and industrial assets also attract significant numbers of female professionals, although men are more likely to work across a broader range of asset types and multi-sectoral projects.
While women have achieved greater representation in fields like asset management and continue their longstanding presence in financial and professional service roles, entrenched underrepresentation in brokerage and certain development segments underscores the continued need for change.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.