Guest Post by Pragya Ojha, Director of Business Development, Design & Build, Awfis Space Solutions Ltd.

Earlier this year, I stumbled upon a statistic that stopped me cold: women constitute only 9% of India's real estate workforce. Nine percent. In an industry projected to hit $1 trillion by 2030, we've somehow managed to sideline half the population.

The irony hit me harder when I thought back to my architecture class in 2002. Women filled hand drawn A1 masterpieces and a third of those seats in the room. So where did they all go?

Turns out, my small dataset wasn't wrong. Today, women make up 55-60% of architecture students but only 20% of practicing architects. By the time you reach leadership positions, we're down to a measly 1-2%. It's like watching a sepia toned depressing movie about apocalyptic disappearance of women unfold in front of you.

The dramatic drop in women's representation from education to leadership positions reveals a massive talent leak in the profession.

The Patriarchal Pecking Order

Real estate isn't alone in this dubious achievement. While IT has managed 30-34% women participation and Banking maintains a somewhat respectable 22-26%, we're sitting at the kids’ table with manufacturing and heavy industries. Apparently, we’re competing with power plants for who can have fewer women in the room.

Comparison of women's workforce participation across major Indian industries

Why They Leave (Spoiler: It’s what you think)

The reasons form a depressing greatest hits album:

• Work-life balance issues: 74% of women cite this as their primary concern
• Glass ceiling syndrome: 68% hit career roadblocks
• Pay gap reality: Women earn 30-40% less than male colleagues
• Site safety concerns: 45% worry about construction site conditions

Multiple interconnected barriers drive women away from architecture and real estate careers, with work-life balance being the top concern.

The construction industry’s “work till you drop” culture, once considered a badge of honor, now looks suspiciously like a filter designed to eliminate anyone with responsibilities beyond the office, usually women.

The Site Situation

Let’s talk about construction sites - those bastions of male bonding where PPE apparently comes in only one size (men’s large), and “separate facilities” means women get to use the porta-potty that’s slightly less disgusting.

When your hard hat doesn’t fit and your safety shoes were clearly designed by someone who has no idea that women’s feet are built differently, it’s not just uncomfortable – it’s dangerous. For those whose career advancement requires extensive site experience, guess who gets left behind?

The Boardroom Blues

Even when women escape construction sites for corporate offices, they face the networking nightmare. LinkedIn is a minefield with 91% of female LinkedIn users reporting receiving inappropriate messages. Business development still happens on golf courses and at “boys’ nights out” post actual networking events. I've seen boardrooms where the gender ratio looks like a corporate monochromatic montage. Much like the flooded LinkedIn pictures of “leadership meets” with a token or two of ‘bookend’ women.

The Mentorship Desert

With only 2% of women in leadership, finding a female mentor in real estate is like spotting a unicorn – theoretically possible but practically unlikely. Young women entering the field are navigating uncharted territory with GPS that only shows routes taken by men.

What Needs to Change

The good news? Other industries have cracked this code. IT companies figured out that flexibility, proper parental leave, and treating employees like human beings (revolutionary concept!) actually works.

Some real estate companies are catching on. But until the industry stops treating work-life balance like a dirty phrase and starts recognizing that diverse teams build better buildings, and better businesses – we’ll keep hemorrhaging talent.

The Bottom Line

Those women from my ‘02 class didn't vanish into thin air. They made rational decisions to build careers in industries that supported their ambitions without requiring them to choose between professional success and personal fulfillment.

The real question isn’t where they went – it’s how many more talented women we can afford to lose before we wake up and build an industry that actually works for everyone.

The talent pipeline is there. The educational foundation exists. What’s missing is an industry willing to evolve beyond its “this is how we've always done it” mentality. Time to change the blueprint.

Banner image: FLW

Pragya Ojha is Director of Business Development, Design & Build, Awfis Space Solutions Ltd.