The gender pay gap across the UK’s top property agencies has narrowed by just five percentage points in five years, with women earning a little over 70% of what their male counterparts took home last year.
Women working for the six biggest agencies – Knight Frank, Savills, JLL, CBRE, Colliers and Cushman & Wakefield – earned on average 71p for every £1 that men were paid, according to data filed with the government.
That signals an annual improvement of one-tenth of a percentage point over the most recent year on record. The gap remained at 29.2% as an average across the companies, compared to 34.3% in the 2017-2018 financial year.
British businesses are required by the government to submit gender pay gap data every year, though this was disrupted during the pandemic.
While most of the agencies reported narrowing figures, Savills’ and Colliers’ data showed the situation had worsened over the most recent year on record.
Savills’ gender pay gap grew by nearly four percentage points to 39.6% in 2021, based on mean data, while Colliers’ grew by 0.6 percentage points to 38.1%. Both companies’ median pay data showed small year-on-year improvements.
Knight Frank, CBRE, JLL and Cushman & Wakefield, on the other hand, all reported narrowing gender pay gaps across both mean and median data.
Knight Frank maintained the narrowest gender pay gap of the group, standing at 18.4%. However, that means it only made an improvement of 0.6 percentage points. This means that, on average, a woman working at Knight Frank earns 82p for every £1 a man earns.
CBRE made a small gain with a 0.8-percentage-point year-on-year improvement based on mean data. That leaves the agency with a 29.5% gap between men’s and women’s pay for 2021.
JLL’s gender pay gap narrowed by 1.4 percentage points to 20.5%, while Cushman & Wakefield’s improved by 1.7 percentage points to 29.2%.
JLL UK chief executive Stephanie Hyde said the firm’s numbers were “still too high and we are striving for better”.
She added: “Our transparent approach to benchmarking shows we need to do lots more to deliver on narrowing our pay gap, meeting our targets and bringing greater balance to our business.
“The real estate industry has historically been slow to react, and we hope that our proactive approach will encourage others to report and help to drive change for the benefit of all.”
Siân Tunney, chair of Savills’ gender diversity group, said: “Our commitment is to help everyone in the business fulfil their potential, as well as attract new talent.
“We have built firm foundations to achieve this as we continue to develop training and mentoring programmes to build a more confident and empowered workforce, while doing everything we can to remove any real and perceived barriers to progression.”
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This article was changed on 5 April to reflect new reporting methodology by CBRE and amended data for JLL
