Still a minority, women try to expand their presence in construction

Two groups of women in the construction sector lead initiatives to change male dominance among the leaders of the segment.

Founded in 2019 by the architect Elisa Tawill, author of the book “Owners – the rise of female leadership in the real estate sector” (Maquinaria Editorial, 192 pages, R$ 27.92), Mulheres no Imobiliário brings together around 700 professionals.

The group debates its market share and helps other women enter the sector, with free training for those who lost their jobs during the pandemic and want to become real estate agents.

A survey carried out by the group in January 2021, carried out in partnership with DataStore with 803 women who work in the sector, found that 61% of them have already been through situations that left them offended or embarrassed while performing their professional activity, with 40% reported episodes of sexual harassment, 28% of moral harassment and 21% of machismo.

The survey also showed that, among professionals who are mothers, 44% reported difficulty resuming work after maternity leave.

“These are environments that were historically filled by men”, says Tawill, who highlights the prevalence of professionals coming from engineering, economics and law courses in the real estate sector.

The GRI, the real estate market club that brings together the main executives of companies in the sector, also realized that it had little female representation and decided to act. Last year, the GRI Women in Real Estate Brazil Committee was created.

“In 2019, we had a maximum of 30 women at an event with 450 people, for a long time I was one of the few women at the meetings”, says Patrícia Frazatto, director of the GRI and responsible for the committee.

The group, which currently comprises 50 executives, aims to bring these women together, who often only knew male professionals in competing companies, and foster new business between them.

“Our main point is that they get to know each other and that we can give them the spotlight, that they are invited to present panels [nos eventos do clube]”.

Frazatto also focused on increasing the number of women enrolled in the club, even if they are not yet on the committee. If in 2019 there were 20, at the end of 2021 there were already 169 registered.

At the other end of the market, in real estate, the female presence is already greater. The real estate marketing platform EmCasa, for example, has 47% of the sales team made up of women, and they have performed better than their male counterparts — in four of the last six months, brokerages registered the best brand of sales.

“This shows the ability of women to connect more easily with people, being able to convey empathy with the customer, which makes them have expressive results in our market”, says Amanda Lins, director of people at EmCasa.

Renée Silveira is one of the few women at the head of developers. Since the beginning of 2019, she has been director of incorporation at Plano&Plano, one of the largest in the economic segment in the country.

She has been with the company for 15 years, she recalls that when she started her career at the developer there were only two women in management positions – currently there are 8, against 14 men – and it seemed unthinkable to have a woman in the position she occupies.

“When I took on the position of director, several women who work here at the company or in the segment called me to praise, seeing how representative this was, especially for the interns”, she says.

Silveira analyzes that, in a few generations, women have already advanced a lot in their rights and presence in the labor market, but that they still need to prove themselves more than their male colleagues to achieve the same positions and recognition.

When she was just 17 years old, she already decided that she would not have children, and she says that it was possible to see the relief of professionals when she mentioned this in job interviews.

“It’s a complicated situation, because normally the owners of companies or CEOs are men”, says Silveira. “There is always this concern about how much a woman would dedicate herself to be in a leadership position”.

She believes, however, that there is now a greater willingness on the part of companies to promote a balance between personal and professional life, and a movement to face motherhood in a more humanized way, which will help more women to reach leadership positions.

For the director of development, being a woman also brings advantages to working in the real estate market, such as a better ability to negotiate and manage different tasks at the same time, characteristics necessary for developers.

Tawill recalls that he started the first Women in Real Estate event already thinking about the end of the initiative. “I opened the meeting wishing that in a few years the movement would not have to exist, that it would be something natural”, he says.​

​Women are the focus of fintech initiatives

On the 17th, real estate credit fintech Crediall launched a specific real estate credit line for women, Crediall Mulher. The project was carried out in partnership with Elisa Tawill, from Mulheres no Imobiliário, and the company will direct 2% of the earnings to initiatives to combat domestic violence, such as the Mapa do Acolhimento platform.

The line will have free legal and financial support for women, and says it will have a rate below 8% per year.

According to Paulo Carrete, founder of Crediall, the company is building a system of algorithms to combat what he believes to be a negative score bias for women in the credit market. The reasons would be the fact that women still earn less than men and the impact of motherhood on their careers.

“Banks don’t speak directly, but we realize that when a woman buys alone, she ends up or having difficulties to approve [o crédito] or approving a little less compared to a man who buys alone”, says Carrete.

In November, Chilean startup Creditú also started operating in Brazil with a focus on offering real estate credit to women, informal workers and young people. At the time, the executive president of the business, Ignacio Alamos, said that these groups face more difficulty in accessing financing because they cannot find job stability or do not have so much money saved.