Mothers, wives and … builders

Politicians may be still arguing about equal representation in parliament, but women in real estate and construction are slowly but surely increasing their presence in thesector and taking on “masculine responsibilities”. Of course, being chivalrous us men don’t mind... much

Emil Górecki                                                                                               management board.

Female agents take tothefield

At mybehest, theentire Warsaw office of Cushman & Wakefield set out toidentify themost important women in Polish real estate. Several hours later, theagents finally managed tocome up with alist. The opening name on it was Barbara Topolska, thegeneral director of development company Neinver. This was followed by: Lydia Loitz, purchasing manager at SEB; Sabine Dost-Young, senior executive of Aberdeen Immobilien KAG; Urszula Aumasson, development director of Orbis; Anna Fijałkowska, project manager at Europolis Real Estate Asset Manangement; Magdalena Szulc, country manager of Segro; Monika Dębska, chair of theboard at Knight Frank, as well as theabove-mentioned Agnieszka Jachowicz of Arka BZ WBK AIB and Jolanta Nowakowska-Zimoch of Lowells law office. The subject of women in senior positions must be aparticularly important one at Cushman & Wakefield, since as many as three women wanted totalk tome about it: Dorota Skowrońska, HR manager, Aneta Rogowicz-Gała, deputy director of theproperty management department, and Izabela Mucha, senior valuer. They all remarked that male dominance does not apply toevery area of thereal estate sector. “There are more and more women in theconsulting sector, particularly in retail space leasing or evaluation, where it is important tobuild long-term relationships, pay attention todetail and cooperate with clients in asmooth way. While there are statistically fewer women in construction companies, they are actually in aslight majority in consulting companies. There have been as many as 55-60pct making up thestaff of Cushman & Wakefield. Even motherhood does not seem todisrupt our careers,” claims Dorota Skowrońska.

The women do tentatively admit that they prefer towork with men –or at least in agender-balanced environment. “It is easier toreach agreement with men because they are focused on thetargets. Wewomen often pay too much attention tothedetails, which are sometimes unimportant in terms of thewhole task. Weprefer toplan each detail of anoperation in advance, whereas men strive towards its successful conclusion, and solve possible problems that arise in theprocess. Men are much more synthetic in their approach, particularly when in management positions,” is Aneta Rogowicz-Gała’s analysis.