Woman’s Work

Us too? Even in a historically “women’s business,” has sexism manifests itself in the purchase and sale of homes?  Ours is a business which always enabled smart entrepreneurial women to rise to the top of the profession. And yet, subtle forms of discrimination remain.

There is no residential brokerage “casting couch.” No listing I have ever heard of has been awarded on the basis of the granting of sexual favors. And while female agents have been (appropriately) apprehensive about meeting strangers alone in empty houses or apartments, the incidence of actual inappropriate behavior or violence remains minimal. The expressions of prejudice inform conversations and behaviors in less overt ways.

First, clients and customers treat women agents disrespectfully more frequently than they do men. Not that it happens so often. But if buyers or sellers are dismissive or even hostile in the way they react to advice or guidance, the agent, at least in my office, is more likely a woman, even when the client has selected the agent himself. I have witnessed a number of situations in which the same advice, delivered by a man, receives a substantially different and more positive reaction than when delivered by a woman, even if the latter trumps the former in experience. Is it any accident that the stars of “Million Dollar Listing” are men? The perception that, by and large, that level of ultra-high price deal making belongs to the guys subtly reinforces the notion that, if you want to buy or sell for big bucks, a man will have a better business head and represent you better.

And then there is the question of math! In my generation, it was assumed that women were poor at math and this frequently became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course this assumption never had a basis in fact.  Successful agents in our business require both strong arithmetic and conceptual skills; deals need to be carefully financially structured and Board packages need to be massaged to make sure the presentation of assets shows in its most positive light. Fortunately I think this prejudice, which is both sui generis and externally imposed, seems to have disappeared in the generation of women under 50 who now make up many of our top agents. They often put my arithmetical skills to shame, about which I could not be more delighted.

The great agents of the generation above mine, almost all women, were often known as “barracudas.” That meant that they did not display appropriately “feminine” behavior in their negotiations; they displayed business savvy and strength which would have gone unremarked or praised in a man. In the 1950s and 60s and 70s, given prevailing attitudes towards business, those women HAD to be tough to succeed. Today, men and women share equal success in real estate; as men increasingly inhabit higher echelons in the residential business, women become more and more successful on the commercial side. Some gender prejudices linger, whether about ability, or skills, or the appropriateness of certain types of behavior. Maybe it takes another generation before they really disappear.

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