The CRE Gender Pay Gap Has Shrunk By 50%. It's Not Because Women Are Being Paid More

The gaping disparity in compensation for men and women in commercial real estate narrowed from 34% to 13% in the last five years, but the change isn't the result of women’s earnings or access expanding.

Instead, that progress was largely the result of an overall drop in commissions and bonuses, from $122K in 2020 to $68K in 2025, according to the 2025 benchmark study by the Commercial Real Estate Women Network, released Thursday.

CREW data shows base salaries are near parity — $151K for men versus $146K for women, a 4% gap. The disparities come from discretionary pay.

“If the decline in men's commissions and bonuses is the primary driver of this narrowing compensation gap, and not increased earnings or expanded opportunities for women, that's not structural progress, just market contraction,” Project REAP Executive Director Taneshia Nash Laird said.

CREW surveyed 2,450 CRE professionals this spring, with 86% of those identifying as female.

Women earned on average $191K annually versus $220K for men, CREW’s report shows. That is on par with the broader economy, where the gap has narrowed only slightly in two decades, with women earning 85% of men's income in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center.

Women have historically avoided the risk-based income streams and haven't been the biggest participants in commission-driven or heavily bonus-laden compensation packages, according to Collete English Dixon, executive director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate at Roosevelt University. 

“As always in times of cyclical upheaval in this industry, I think women have tended to fare generally worse than men,” English Dixon said. 

The contraction in commissions and bonuses is partially a result of market forces.

Transaction volume has come down on the leasing and investment sales side in the large commercial services companies, according to Mandi Wedin, founder and CEO of Feroce Real Estate Advisors.

While this is a corporate culture and an equity issue, Wedin said it is a legitimate economic one as well.

“From a macro perspective, when we see large pay parity issues, from an investor perspective, that's a risk — that some portion of your employment base is underpaid, and as the market recovers, they will leave or they're at risk of leaving,” Wedin said. 

According to CREW data, the commission gap in asset management was 15%. In brokerage, it was nearly double, at 33%. 

Only 32% of women said they were willing to take commission-based roles, compared to 45% of men. Those figures were 51% and 59%, respectively, in 2005.

“I think this actually leads us to looking at the overall business model of commission-based earnings and motivations tied to commission work,” CREW CEO Alison Beddard said.

Beddard said shifting compensation structures to more salary-bonus models could be positive. But it wouldn't solve the issue of access. Women often struggle to gain access to the larger deals that lead to higher commissions. The issue is cultural as well as structural. 

With the shift to remote work and later a hybrid model, women leveraged the increased flexibility. The CREW study found that women work remotely 2.5 more hours per week than men, but promotions skew toward employees who spend more time in the office.

“We are still operating on the old system, that first in, last out of the office means hardest working and most productive,” said Melina Cordero, a former CBRE executive who now runs consultancy P20 Leadership.

Companies looking to close the gap need to restructure their assessments for the promotional process to be more inclusive, she said.

Women still make $29K less than men overall in CRE. At the top, C-suite men earn 24% more than women. Entry-level and self-employed women outearn men, but gaps expand with seniority. Women hold just 9% of C-suite positions, unchanged for 20 years. Only 31% of women under 40 aspire to the C-suite, down from 36% in 2020. Meanwhile, 13% of men now say they want less responsibility.

“I found it interesting that less people want to be in the C-suite than there used to be,” English Dixon said.

“There's clearly a little bit of a ceiling here, like a plastic wall we have to push our way through.”

Seventy-nine percent of men said opportunities had improved since 2020, but only 62% of women agreed. For the first time, women cited gender discrimination as the No. 1 barrier to success. 

Although down from 45% in 2020, nearly one-third of women still reported sexist behavior in 2025, despite several years of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that have since eroded. 

“Women are still very much feeling the disconnect,” Cordero said. “They're feeling that the opportunities are not the same ... and they're just feeling generally not quite as supported as their male peers.”

While women overall struggle with pay parity, the gaps along racial lines are even starker. Latina and white women earn 90 cents for every dollar men earn. Asian women earn 79 cents, and Black women earn 74 cents.

CREW's survey doesn't break out data for nonbinary people, who made up less than 1% of those surveyed. In general, nonbinary people make 70 cents for every dollar earned by a “typical” worker, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

“What I would love to see is more intentional placement of women of color in those revenue-driving and leadership-track roles,” Nash Laird said.

“But how they get there is making sure that they have sponsorship models that move beyond mentorship so that there are people that are advocating for them when they're not in the room.”

Beddard encourages women to share their ideas with their sponsors and managers on promotions they want next and how to position themselves for those next roles. 

“Commission-based work is one of the most equalizing compensation structures available in commercial real estate, and it has shown over and over how well women excel in brokerage and business development roles,” she said. 

The narrowing of the pay gap in 2025 shows how easily the industry risks mistaking market forces for progress. With compensation tied so tightly to transactions and cycles, industry sources say true equity will only come from structural change in how deals are allocated, how promotions are measured and how leadership pipelines are built.

“There's been some improvement. Not as much as I would have hoped in 25 years, but there has been some,” English Dixon said. “Which means there can be more and that we've got the wherewithal to continue to move this needle in the right direction.”