Is Real Estate a Male-Dominated Field? Women in Real Estate and Its Advertising

Residential real estate is not a male-dominated field. Women made up 66% of REALTORS® in NAR’s 2026 Member Profile, which covers 2025, and 55.8% of employed real estate brokers and sales agents in 2025 federal labor data. Commercial real estate is the exception, where women hold a minority of jobs and still earn less.

So the short answer depends on which part of the industry you mean. The agent workforce leans female. Commercial brokerage, development and investment lean male. And real estate advertising has often lagged behind both the people who sell homes and the people who buy them.

Is real estate a male-dominated field today?

Real estate as a whole is not male-dominated, but the answer changes by segment. Three current sources cover the main parts of the industry, and they point the same way for residential work and the opposite way for commercial.

Here is how the numbers compare, with the year each one describes:

Segment	Women’s share	Year of data	Source
REALTORS® (NAR members)	66%, up from 63% the year before	2025 activity, 2026 report	NAR Member Profile
All employed real estate brokers and sales agents	55.8% of 1,065,000 workers	2025 annual averages	BLS Current Population Survey
Property, real estate and community association managers	50.6%	2025 annual averages	BLS Current Population Survey
Commercial real estate industry	38%	2025 survey	CREW Network benchmark study

NAR’s release, dated June 25, 2026, also describes the typical REALTOR® as a 57-year-old white woman who attended college and owns her home. The federal figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPS Table 11, which notes that its 2025 averages are based on 11 months of data.

What percentage of real estate agents are women?

Between 56% and 66% of real estate agents are women, depending on who is counting. NAR’s figure of 66% covers its own members. The BLS figure of 55.8% covers everyone employed as a real estate broker or sales agent in 2025, including people who are not REALTORS®.

The gap between the two is not a contradiction. NAR surveys members of a trade association. The BLS runs a household survey of the whole workforce. Use the NAR number when you are talking about REALTORS® specifically, and the BLS number when you mean the occupation as a whole. Either way, women are the majority.

Older articles still repeat figures from 2019 to 2022, so check the date on any statistic before you put it in a presentation or a recruiting deck.

Where are women still underrepresented in real estate?

Commercial real estate is where women remain underrepresented and underpaid. CREW Network’s 2025 benchmark study, run with the MIT Center for Real Estate and completed by 2,450 industry professionals, found that women make up 38% of the commercial real estate industry.

The same study found that, in 2025:

• Women earned 4% less than men in base salary, down from a 10% gap in CREW’s previous study.
• Women earned 13% less in overall compensation, including salary, commission, bonuses and profit-sharing.
• Women earned 35% less from commission, bonuses and profit-sharing.
• For the first time in the study’s history, women named gender discrimination in the workplace as their primary barrier to success.

Residential pay works differently because most agents are paid by commission on their own production, so there is no salary scale to compare. That does not guarantee equal outcomes, but it means the residential and commercial pictures should not be blended into one headline.

How are women represented in real estate advertising?

Real estate advertising often shows a narrow picture of who buys homes, and the data says that picture is out of date. In NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, married couples were 61% of buyers, single women were 21% and single men were 9%.

Single women, in other words, bought more than twice as many homes as single men. Yet a lot of listing photography, brokerage ads and stock imagery still defaults to a couple with children, or to a man holding the keys and a woman admiring the kitchen. That is a missed audience, and it can be a compliance problem.

Why is representation in housing ads a Fair Housing issue?

Representation in housing ads is a Fair Housing issue because the law covers what an ad signals, not just what it says. Section 3604(c) of the Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to publish an ad for the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates a preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin.

Sex and familial status are both on that list. (Our guide to fair housing words, photos and ad targeting to avoid covers the other protected classes.) In practice that means:

• Describe the property, not the buyer you imagine. “Three bedrooms and a fenced yard” is fine. “Perfect for a single woman” or “ideal bachelor pad” signals a preference.
• Avoid copy that steers by family type, such as “great for empty nesters” or “no place for kids”, unless your broker confirms a legal exemption applies.
• When people appear in ads, show a range of people so the housing reads as open to everyone, not reserved for one group.
• Never describe a neighborhood by who lives there. Describe amenities, commute times and features instead.

This is general information, not legal advice. Your broker and your state’s rules decide what is acceptable, so run new ad templates past them.

Does a male or female voice sell real estate better?

No reliable study we found shows that a male or female voice sells real estate better. Searches for this question mostly turn up general advertising research or opinion pieces, not tested results from property marketing. Treat confident claims either way with suspicion.

The useful question is narrower: which voice, script and pacing work best for your audience and your listings? You can answer that yourself:

1. Record the same 30-second listing video twice with two narrators, keeping the script, music and edit identical.
2. Run both versions to the same audience with the same budget for the same period.
3. Compare watch time and clicks to the listing page, not likes.
4. Repeat with a second listing before drawing any conclusion, because one test is noise.

Most of the time, clarity, local knowledge and a confident delivery will matter more than whether the narrator is a man or a woman.

How can women agents build a visible personal brand?

Women agents build visible brands the same way any agent does: by being findable, quotable and consistently useful in public. Since women are already the majority of agents, standing out comes from expertise and visibility, not from gender.

A few channels earn more than their share of attention:

• Podcast interviews. Guesting on other people’s shows puts your voice and expertise in front of new audiences, and the episode pages often link back to you. Our guide to podcast guesting as an SEO strategy explains how those appearances help your website, and whether guesting increases searches for your name covers the brand side.
• Your own content. Market updates, neighborhood guides and short videos give search engines and AI tools something to cite when people ask about your area.
• Professional networks. Local associations and groups such as the Women’s Council of REALTORS® are places to find mentors, referral partners and speaking slots. Our guide on finding a real estate mentor has a step-by-step approach.

If you want to be considered by more hosts at once, you can create a speaker profile on the Icons guest hub, which lets you apply to shows across the Icons network.

How do brokerages show women fairly in recruiting and brand ads?

Brokerages show women fairly by reflecting the team they actually have and the clients they actually serve, which is also the starting point for brokerage marketing that recruits and sells under one brand. If two-thirds of REALTORS® are women, a recruiting ad featuring only men in leadership roles tells candidates something about your culture, whether you meant it or not.

Use this checklist when you review brand, listing and recruiting ads:

• People in photos and videos reflect a range of ages, races, genders and family types.
• Women appear as agents, team leads and decision-makers, not only as clients admiring a kitchen.
• Listing copy describes features and location facts, never the ideal buyer’s sex or family status.
• Neighborhood descriptions avoid any reference to who lives there.
• Statistics in your ads are current and dated (for example, “66% of REALTORS® in 2025”).
• Your broker has signed off on new templates before they run.

The same discipline applies when you market across property types. Our comparison of residential and commercial real estate marketing covers where Fair Housing rules apply and where they don’t.