Professional activity of Polish women on the real estate market

Today’s labour market sees a trend of feminisation which is developing with varying intensity in individual segments of the economy. Its shape in individual countries is influenced by the local economic, social and cultural environment. The phenomenon strengthening representation of women in certain industries is referred to as horizontal occupational segregation (Zwiech 2010). In the EU the most feminized industries are education, health and social care. The aim of this study is to assess the level and range of changes over time in the process of feminisation of regulated professions on the Polish real estate market. With this aim in view, I used data on the number of professional licenses granted by the relevant minister between  1990–2014 broken down by gender and geographical location (voivodships). The study verifies a hypothesis of growing women’s participation in the Polish real estate market in three professions that had been regulated before 2014.

Therefore,  I determined the dynamics of the feminisation ratios observed in the professions of a valuer, property manager and  real estate broker in voivodships. I also classified voivodships according to their level of feminisation in the real estate  service sector by means of the k-means method and Ward’s method.

In order to assess structural changes over time in the group of women engaged in the above mentioned regulated professions  I used simple structural diversity measures based on proportions of the share of a given component in the structure over the time intervals t and t+1. The values of the structural diversity measures lie within <0;1>, where the value approaching zero means that diversity is weak, while the measure value close to one indicates strong structural diversification. 

After over twenty years of market economy, the Polish real estate market has stabilised in terms of economic mechanisms. However, it is still subject to some social processes, such as feminisation of individual  professions related with the real estate services, even those requiring expertise in exact and technical science. These changes manifest themselves in the growing number of licenses obtained by women and, consequently, by their growing share in the total number of licensed professionals.