At the end of our 1-year research the Turkish branch of the GKLP (Women Leaders in Real Estate Platform) prepared a report called “Being a Woman in a Masculine Industry”. Our report received a Gold Award in the “Egalitarian Owl” category at the TÜAD Owl Awards.
Fatma Çelenk, Ant Yapı General Coordinator in charge of Corporate Communications and Sales and Marketing, talks about the preparation process of the ‘Being a Woman in a Masculine Industry’ report:
At GKLP, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) ‘Women’s Leadership Initiative’ (WLI) Turkish branch, we began our activities in 2016 and brought together leading non-governmental organizations in the real estate industry on the topic of ‘women’. At GKLP, we have a very clear goal and solution map: “Determination of the problems and needs of all women who have a career in the real estate industry, and the development of concrete and applicable solutions.”
This goal enables us to have strong beliefs about the future. Our biggest motivation is to increase female employment, the number of female managers and their effectiveness in our industry. With women’s leadership in real estate, the aim is for the woman to have a balance in both her life and work, which means enjoying a personal life, a fulfilling career, managing colleagues, and delivering results for the company she works for.
The positive findings we achieved in a few years and the motivation of the participants have given us strong hope for the future for women in the industry. Our report titled “Being a Woman in a Masculine Industry”, which was prepared after our research, received a GOLD AWARD in the “Egalitarian Owl” category at the Owl Awards, hosted by the Turkish Researchers’ Association (TÜAD), which is seen as the Oscar of the research world.
According to the concrete information obtained as a result of our research, we have determined five main goals.
- To be a platform that produces research and reports,
- To organize training in cooperation with various institutions and mentoring programs to prepare women for leadership,
- Bringing female opinion leaders together to increase representation and visibility,
- To raise awareness in public and private industries in order to ensure that women can sit at the tables where decisions are taken and to increase the number of women on the board of directors of companies,
- To be a reference point for the expectations and needs of women working in the industry.
While regularly following all national and international research under the title of ‘women’, we also organized meetings on different platforms to benefit from the experiences of women in senior management positions of companies, created mentoring programs, and started to organize training programs to support the presence of women in the real estate industry.
We have planned our activities in three main areas of education. We prepare training focused on ‘Technology’ and ‘Sustainability’ for those who want to deepen their professional life in the institution they work in the real estate industry, ‘Entrepreneurship’ for those who want to establish and develop their own business, and ‘Personal Development’ for those who need individual development in order to overcome the challenges in business life. We develop each topic by meeting and collaborating with different institutions.
GI Group, Özyeğin University, Deloitte, Circular Economy Platform 101 are among the institutions that voluntarily support our cause within the scope of planned collaborations. We wish to continue with strong steps and contribution in order to provide awareness and economic added value in our industry.