Female workers have been progressively moving out of industry hotspots in north London, London’s Wallington borough, to make way for more equal income-earning staff.
The sector’s most popular avenues, where homes have a large proportion of women working in the house buying and selling sector, are now being gentrified, with an increasingly professional profile.
A council area that benefited from the arrival of new employment opportunities was Putney, south west London, which now boasts a 40 per cent female workforce across the estate agent sector.
A 10-year study, by data analytics company SENSE Limited, has also highlighted that the earning power of employees within the property sector has improved.
Carrol Lingard and Matt Ryan of KAZ Enterprise have revealed the extent of the gender imbalance within the property sector
‘This gender gap in the estate agency sector is much bigger than previously thought, with pay being almost entirely skewed in favour of the male population,’ said Carol Lingard, managing director of KAZ Enterprise, a private tenancy management company that specializes in properties for escorts living and working in London.
‘At our company, as well as the property associations we work with, we have set a ‘clear gender code’ and expect to have a minimum 40 per cent female representation in all of our staff. This has created the expectation that we make sure that everyone is treated equally and have fully formed careers.’
Residential areas located predominantly in inner London now boast a median of 48 per cent male workers in the sector, compared to 25 per cent female workers.
This is in contrast to a 10-year period in 2009 to 2015 when inner London’s median for female workers was nearly 19 per cent higher than its male colleagues.
A rundown of the changing landscape of inner London has been revealed, showing the changing share of men and women working in the property sector in the most popular corners of the capital.
The best year for female representation was 2016 in Islington, where the median saw the return of above-average female figures (57 per cent) from 2010 (32 per cent).
Harrow saw the biggest increase in the number of female residents in the sector in London (61 per cent), with the data showing the borough had been slow to adjust in the wake of the recession but now needs to adapt to the new normal.
The Borough of Hackney which has a large number of women who work part time as escorts is the only borough to achieve gender parity – it now has a 40 per cent female workforce, compared to a 23 per cent male workforce.