Track2Realty Exclusive: Many such mothers as real estate professionals feel that the real estate sector with its steel, concrete, bricks and mortar requires not only aggression, power, dominance and vigour but it also involves a lot of site related work, travelling and people involved deal with the inherent malice in the industry.
However, at the same time, it also requires creativity, planning, co-ordination and perseverance where a female presence becomes a necessity and compliments their male counterparts to work beautifully as a team, towards the targeted goal.
Renuka Chohan, Head of Corporate Planning with RNA Corp came to the world of real estate 12 years back after spending 13 years with the FMCG sector. She had a supportive husband and very loving mother-in-law who never questioned long duration official tours, late hours and leaving her only son behind. She feels it is any way difficult for a working woman to make a balancing act between duty, family and young child. Here you have more problems in realty business for various practical reasons.
“It is changing, I must admit. Earlier there were very few women and that too mostly in architecture and design. Now working women are everywhere in real estate, even in sales and marketing. And challenge is always there if you are mother of a small kid back home, but society by and large is accepting it as a way of life now,” says Chohan.
Poonam Gundecha, Director, Gundecha Group believes being more organised, planning and multi-tasking are some of the qualities of a woman that makes her apart from a man. “Nowadays, there is a bigger role for women to play in real estate. As you can see, these days women are into aspects like planning, designing and the legal aspects of the industry as well,” she says.
“Yes, I would agree to a certain extent, that women do bring something more to the field of real estate development. However, at the same time, I can’t say that it is only the woman who is better. Take for instance, myself and my husband Suhas, we have a very good combination when it comes to work. I personally believe that a man and a woman should be parallel to each other, only then the things will work out. Yes, I would agree that there is definitely a bigger role for women to play in the development of real estate and the various facets that combine to make it a whole,” says Dhruti Sankpal, Vice Chairperson, Sankpal Group.
It would be an understatement to say that the ever increasing role of working mothers in the real estate sector has been a natural progression. As a matter fact, they have increasingly raised the bar and started taking assignments which is often considered challenging by men as well.
Well, the traditional challenges of women may not have changed, what has definitely changed in the last one decade is that the collective consciousness of the male-dominated society has been forced to accept working women and mothers in realty as a reality. As Sonal Shrivastav says, women are making steady progress into this industry and in the recent two- three years, I find myself smiling to see more number of women as a part of the project team which was not the case earlier.
