The Quick Read
- A joint JLL and NAREDCO MAHI report states that women hold only 1–2% of C-suite and managerial leadership positions in India’s real estate sector.
- Women’s representation may begin at 40–45% in entry-level roles, but the report points to 48% attrition around the mid-career stage and 70% attrition towards senior management.
- The problem is not that real estate is naturally suited to men. It is that its networks, site conditions, career paths and leadership culture were largely built around men.
- More women in leadership can help the sector understand buyers better, strengthen governance, widen the talent pool and build housing and cities around a broader range of lived experiences.
- Real progress requires sponsorship, site exposure, transparent promotions, return-to-work pathways and responsibility for revenue, finance, land, projects and investment, not only “women-friendly” support roles.
A woman may shortlist the neighbourhood, compare the floor plans, question the builder, study the loan, examine the kitchen storage, assess the route to school and decide whether a family should place 20 years of savings into a home.
Yet when the company behind that home decides what to build, where to build it, how to finance it and who will lead the business, she is far less likely to be in the room. That contradiction sits at the centre of women in real estate leadership in India.
The joint report, Building Inclusive Future: Empowering Women in India’s Real Estate Transformation, published by JLL and NAREDCO MAHI, states that women hold only 1–2% of C-suite and managerial leadership positions in the sector. It also describes a steep talent leak between entry and leadership: women’s representation is estimated at 40–45% at entry level, followed by 48% attrition around the mid-career stage and 70% attrition towards senior management.
The number is startling. But the more important question is not simply why so few women sit at the top. That is why an industry that builds the places where women live, work, travel, shop, raise children and grow older still behaves as though real estate leadership belongs naturally to men.
Is real estate really a man’s industry?
Most of us frequently describe real estate as a male-dominated business. That description is accurate as a record of who currently holds power. But let us not mistake it for an explanation of who is capable of holding it.
Nothing about evaluating land, raising capital, negotiating contracts, understanding consumers, managing projects or designing cities is biologically male.
The stereotype comes from the way the business developed.
For decades, real estate leadership was closely tied to family-owned development companies, land networks, construction sites, late-night negotiations, government interfaces, finance circles and informal relationships built outside the office. Access often depended on being introduced to the right person, attending the right gathering or remaining available at hours designed around men with fewer domestic expectations.
Over time, familiarity began to masquerade as suitability.
The men already inside the network appeared to possess the “right profile” for the industry. Women outside it were viewed as inexperienced because they had not been given access to the experiences that produced that profile.
The JLL–NAREDCO MAHI report identifies this exclusion at several levels. At the executive and ownership levels, it points to invisible deal pipelines, exclusion from power circles, capital-access gaps, and repeated demands that women prove their legitimacy. At the senior-management level, it notes delayed promotions, widening pay gaps and women being channelled towards supposedly softer portfolios.
Real estate did not become a man’s industry because men alone could do the work. It became one because its routes to authority repeatedly led through male networks.
The industry has women. It keeps losing them before power arrives
The leadership figure can create the impression that women are barely entering the sector. That is not the full story.
Women already work across architecture, law, valuation, customer relations, marketing, brokerage, sustainability, project coordination, design, property management, analytics and finance. The report maps their participation across five tiers, from construction and service roles to professional positions, senior management and executive leadership.
The trouble appears as careers advance.
A young architect may enter a developer’s office with strong qualifications. A woman may join sales, legal, design or consulting and perform well. But senior real estate leadership often requires exposure to land acquisition, project execution, investment, profit-and-loss responsibility, construction sites and high-value negotiations.
Women are not always moved through those assignments. Instead, they may remain concentrated in marketing, customer relations, human resources, communications or interior design. These functions matter. The problem begins when organisations treat them as the natural destination for women while reserving capital, projects, land and operations for men.
A woman can spend 15 years in real estate and still hear that she lacks the operational depth required for the top job. That depth was not missing by accident. It was never placed in her career path.
The report describes the glass ceiling between vice-president and CXO positions, post-maternity derailment, restricted site access and mentorship gaps in later career stages. It recommends sponsorship, leadership development, transparent promotion systems and stronger access to finance and technology training.
That is not a pipeline shortage in the usual sense. It is a pipeline with several carefully placed exits.
A site is a workplace, not a test of masculinity
Construction and project operations remain among the most stubborn barriers.
Women professionals may be told that sites are unsafe, shifts are too long, facilities are inadequate, or labour teams will not accept their authority. These concerns can be real. But organisations often respond by keeping women away rather than making sites workable.
That choice has career consequences.
A project leader who has managed complex sites, handled contractors, solved delays and delivered buildings gains credibility inside the business. Someone denied those opportunities may later be judged as lacking execution experience.
The company creates the experience gap and then uses it to justify the promotion gap.
The report lists poor sanitation, harassment risks, site-access barriers, weak implementation of sexual-harassment safeguards and inadequate childcare among the obstacles women face. It also states that 95–98% of women in construction work informally, without adequate labour protection, job security, insurance or childcare support.
The industry must stop treating bad site conditions as proof that women do not belong on sites.
A project that can coordinate hundreds of workers, tonnes of material, sophisticated machinery and crores of rupees can surely coordinate safe transport, proper toilets, protective equipment, reporting systems and humane working hours.
The difficulty is not engineering. It is priority.
Women are already shaping the housing market
The leadership gap becomes still more curious when you see it from the customer side.
Women increasingly influence where families live, what they buy and which features make a property usable. Their concerns often extend beyond the number of bedrooms or the prestige of a postcode.
- They may notice whether the approach road is safely lit.
- Whether public transport is accessible.
- Whether the kitchen and storage reflect how households actually function.
- Whether a woman can return from work after dark.
- Whether children and older people can move safely through the development.
- Whether maintenance systems work after the launch campaign ends.
Women are also property owners, investors, tenants and entrepreneurs. Public housing policy has increasingly recognised ownership by women, while women’s access to safe and affordable housing has become closely connected to migration, workforce participation and financial security.
As Change in Content has argued in its analysis of safe and affordable housing for women, housing is not merely a real estate product. Its location, price, transport links and safety can decide whether a woman can accept a job, move to a city or remain employed.
Yet the people most affected by these design choices remain severely under-represented in the leadership structures that approve them. It does not mean every woman thinks alike or that a female executive automatically speaks for all female buyers. Women differ by age, class, disability, income, family structure, region and preference.
It means a leadership room drawn from a narrow social group is more likely to miss realities outside that group.
Women in real estate leadership: What would women leaders bring to real estate?
The argument for women’s leadership should not rest on the claim that women are naturally more empathetic, careful or sustainable. That simply replaces one stereotype with a more flattering one.
Women can be rigorous investors, demanding project heads, ambitious founders, hard negotiators and commercially aggressive executives. The value lies in widening the range of talent, knowledge and experience available to the business.
A closer understanding of the buyer
Residential real estate sells more than built-up area. It sells daily life.
A more representative leadership team can ask stronger questions about safety, mobility, childcare, eldercare, accessibility, community design and how homes are actually used. Those questions can improve the product for men as well as women.
A larger leadership pipeline
A sector that loses women through the middle of their careers wastes education, training and institutional knowledge.
Replacing experienced employees is expensive. Rebuilding technical and commercial understanding takes time. Retaining and promoting women allows companies to draw leadership from the whole available workforce rather than repeatedly selecting from one half.
Better urban decisions
Real estate companies shape neighbourhoods, office districts, industrial zones, retail areas and entire townships. Decisions about lighting, transport, public space, toilets, pedestrian routes and care infrastructure influence who can use a city freely.
Women’s experience of urban space is not a niche consumer insight. It is part of how cities function.
Stronger governance and sustainability
The report notes women’s contribution to ESG, green-building certification, social equity, wellness-focused workplaces, sustainable communities and technology-led property systems. It identifies women leaders working across environmental standards, financial inclusion, governance transparency and smart-building innovation.
These are no longer decorative areas of real estate. They increasingly influence capital, regulation, operating costs, tenant expectations and long-term asset value.
Greater credibility with the next generation
A young woman considering architecture, construction management, valuation or property finance watches who reaches the top.
When leadership remains almost entirely male, the sector sends an unmistakable message about where her career may stop. Visible women with commercial authority change that calculation.
Godrej Properties’ Collective of Real Estate Women, or CREW, offers one example of an industry effort designed around women’s career experiences. The initiative emerged from an internal study involving more than 500 current and former women employees and aims to support women across real estate, construction and allied fields.
Initiatives matter most when they alter assignments, promotion decisions and authority—not only the photographs used on Women’s Day.
Leadership cannot mean placing women near the customer and men near the capital
Real estate companies often have women in sales offices, customer-experience teams, marketing functions and design conversations.
That visibility can create the impression of progress. But organisational power usually sits elsewhere.
- Who signs off on land?
- Who controls investment?
- Who owns the profit-and-loss account?
- Who leads project delivery?
- Who negotiates debt?
- Who sits before the board when a development is delayed?
- Who is considered a future chief executive?
Women in real estate leadership will not grow substantially until women are placed on those routes.
A company may have a balanced workforce and still maintain a masculine power structure. Representation at the entrance tells us who has been hired. Representation in positions controlling capital and strategy tells us who is trusted.
The distinction matters because leadership is not created through training alone. It is created through consequential assignments.
Mentorship can offer advice. Sponsorship offers a name in the room when a major project, promotion or revenue responsibility is being allocated.
Women need both, but the industry has often offered the first as a substitute for the second.
The maternity explanation is becoming too convenient
Women’s departure from mid-career roles is frequently explained through maternity and caregiving.
Care responsibilities undeniably affect careers. Real estate can intensify the pressure through unpredictable site schedules, travel, long commutes and informal expectations of constant availability. But maternity does not fully explain a 1–2% leadership outcome.
Companies make choices about whether a career break becomes a pause or a permanent penalty. They decide whether returning women receive significant projects or are placed in low-risk assignments. They determine whether flexibility remains compatible with promotion. And they decide whether performance is measured through outcomes or visibility after office hours.
The report calls for structured return programmes, flexible arrangements and childcare support. Those measures are useful, but they should not turn women into a special category managed around motherhood.
Not every woman becomes a mother. Men are parents too. Senior jobs should be designed around serious performance rather than an old model in which the ideal leader has someone else handling life outside work.
What companies can do now to bring more women into real estate leadership
The sector does not need another decade of panels asking why women disappear. It can begin with decisions already within employers’ control.
Track the career leak precisely
A company should know the gender composition of hiring, promotions, exits, high-potential lists, project assignments and leadership succession.
An overall percentage is insufficient. The useful question is where women stop advancing and what happened in the two years before they left.
Put women on commercial career tracks
Women must receive exposure to land, investments, construction, asset management, finance, leasing, project delivery and profit-and-loss responsibility.
The route to leadership cannot remain a closed circuit in which previous operational experience is required, but women are rarely given the first operational assignment.
Replace informal access with visible processes
Jobs, stretch assignments and succession opportunities should not travel mainly through private conversations.
Transparent criteria reduce the influence of old networks and make it harder to keep choosing leaders who resemble the leaders already in place.
Make sites workable
Safe transport, separate sanitation, properly fitted protective equipment, anti-harassment systems and predictable deployment policies should be standard infrastructure.
Women do not need protection from the profession. They need the profession to remove avoidable barriers to doing it.
Move from mentors to sponsors
Senior leaders should be accountable for advancing capable women into roles that carry commercial consequence.
A mentorship programme that does not change who receives power may improve confidence while leaving the organisational structure intact.
Set leadership goals and publish progress
The JLL–NAREDCO MAHI report recommends stronger participation at decision-making levels, transparent pay and promotion policies, leadership development, sponsorship and measures to close wage gaps.
Targets should not become token appointments. They should force companies to inspect why their existing systems repeatedly produce the same type of leader.
The industry is already changing. Leadership must catch up
India’s real estate sector is moving beyond the traditional builder model. It now includes institutional capital, REITs, proptech, warehousing, data centres, flexible workspaces, green buildings, affordable housing, senior living, rental housing and increasingly sophisticated urban development. This expansion creates new leadership routes.
Technology, analytics, sustainability, design, law, finance and consumer intelligence are becoming more central to real estate strategy. Women are already present in many of these fields. The opportunity is to ensure these functions lead towards the centre of the business rather than forming another ring around it.
The stereotype of real estate as a man’s industry is therefore becoming less defensible commercially as well as socially.
An industry cannot modernise its assets while preserving an outdated idea of who looks like a leader.
The Change Ahead
A sector that builds for everyone cannot continue being led almost entirely by one gender.
Women do not need to be invited into real estate as though they are unfamiliar with it. They already buy property, sell it, finance it, design it, regulate it, construct it, manage it and live with the consequences of how it is planned.
The missing step is power.
The 1–2% figure should not produce another round of ceremonial concern. It should push companies to examine who receives operational experience, who controls money, who enters succession plans and whose career is quietly redirected after maternity or a request for flexibility.
More women in real estate leadership will not merely make the sector look more inclusive.
It can help the industry understand its customers more deeply, retain skilled professionals, design better places and make stronger decisions about the future of India’s cities.
Real estate has spent decades selling families the promise of a better life. It is time to ask why so few women are allowed to lead the companies building it.
Editorial Note and Sources
This article is based primarily on the June 2026 JLL–NAREDCO MAHI knowledge paper Building Inclusive Future: Empowering Women in India’s Real Estate Transformation. The report brings together industry observations and secondary sources rather than presenting a nationally representative workforce census. Its 1–2% leadership estimate should therefore be read as an industry indicator, not a precise count of every Indian real estate organisation. The article adds independent editorial analysis and does not constitute investment, employment or property advice.
Principal sources
- NAREDCO and JLL: Building Inclusive Future: Empowering Women in India’s Real Estate Transformation.
- NAREDCO: Industry Research Reports, listing the joint report published on 20 June 2026.
- Change in Content: Women Empowerment at Godrej: Leading Inclusivity and Support.
- Change in Content: Safe and Affordable Housing for Women: India’s Growth Story Has a Housing Gap.
