by Bridget McCrea
Inman News Features
A government report recently revealed a widening wage gap between male and female managers in the real estate industry. But women working in real estate’s management ranks say the government’s findings are way off base.
“A New Look Through the Glass Ceiling: Where are the Women?” is based on data compiled by the U.S. General Accounting Office data and analyzed by the staffs of U.S. Reps. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) and Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.).
The report reviews the status of women in management positions in 10 selected industries. Real estate, which is grouped into the same category as financial services and insurance, is one of only five industries in which women hold a share of management jobs that is proportionate to their share of the industry’s workforce.
But those women’s wages aren’t up to par with the wages of their male counterparts, according to the report, which revealed significant and widening salary differentials between male and female full-time managers in the real estate, financial and insurance sectors.
Women earned 76 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned in 1995; in 2000 that figure was only 68 cents for every dollar.
But if a wage gap exists in real estate’s management ranks, no one told Brenda Casserly about it.
“Based on my experience with three national real estate networks, I’ve seen no discrepancies between my financial compensation and that of my male counterparts,” said Casserly, president and COO of ERA Franchise Systems in Parsippany, N.J.
Casserly surmised that combining financial services and insurance with real estate might have skewed the numbers.
“In the other two arenas, compensation may be more salary-based,” said Casserly, adding that real estate is a performance-based business in which managerial compensation is almost universally tied to the company’s sales combined with a base salary.
“If the performance is there,” she added, “the compensation will be there.”
Casserly, who worked her way up through several upper-level positions in three different real estate companies, said the glass ceiling is a myth and the doors are wide open in real estate for women who are willing to work hard.
“If you’re an ethical, well-trained professional sales associate with the customers’ best interest at heart,” she added, “your salary is pretty much unlimited.”
Casserly said women comprise more than 50 percent of ERA’s management ranks, a percentage she’d like to see increase as more women embrace management over sales positions.
“Women have historically thought of themselves as sales associates,” said Casserly, “but I encourage even more women to own their own companies and enter the management arena of real estate.”
But not all women will jump at that opportunity even if it’s presented to them, according to Dorcas Helfant, general management partner and principal broker of Coldwell Banker Professionals in Virginia Beach, Va.
That’s because a move into management can result in a pay cut compared with a sales position, Helfant said.
“The bottom line is that a good agent has no ceiling, but management does,” said
Helfant, “In our business, the labor can make more than management.”