It has been a brutal year in the C-suite, where women executives of commercial real estate-related firms have endured major setbacks after their long climb to the top. Across the country, as company revenues and the value of portfolios have plunged, businesses have slashed payrolls, at times dropping entire divisions.

An estimated one in five women executives has lost her job over the past 12 months in an industry where women already were underrepresented at the highest levels, says Gail Ayers, CEO of the Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Network, an 8,000-member organization based in Lawrence, Kan.

Chief financial officers and attorneys, including senior partners at prestigious law firms, have been particularly hard hit, says Ayers. “Outstanding women have lost their jobs this year. When we struggle to get women at the top, it's devastating to see them cut. There are so few in those positions that it's absolutely painful.”

Women have not been singled out, but because they represent a smaller pool at the chief executive and chief operating officer level, they may be suffering more than men as a group, says Tony LoPinto, CEO of New York-based executive search firm Equinox Partners.

In 2008, the Building Owners and Managers Association, based in Washington, D.C., estimated that more than half of its 17,000 members were women, but only 5% of member CEOs were female. Only three of the country's 169 publicly traded real estate investment trusts were run by women in 2007, CREW reported.

But patterns are slowly changing. Los Angeles-based CEL & Associates reports that by 2014, women are expected to represent 43% of commercial real estate professionals, up 6% from 2008. By 2020, women could occupy 40% of C-suite positions.

Over the course of the recession, though, companies have retrenched at the C-suite level, says LoPinto. “The effect on organizations has been so significant that women have lost ground.”

In his 35 years associated with the commercial real estate industry, nothing compares with the severity of today's recession in causing job and revenue losses, he says. Women and men alike are caught in the riptide, and developers, finance and lending professionals have swirled into joblessness.

Some economists say the country is poised for recovery, but LoPinto expects few gains for women in 2010. “It's going to be difficult for women to make any material progress until we get back into a full growth cycle.”

As the number of executives has shrunk, so has the size of paychecks. In June, a new survey by Chicago-based research firm FPL Advisory Group showed that total compensation for C-suite real estate executives dropped by nearly 20% in 2008 compared with the previous year.

CREW has contracted with Cornell University to conduct a survey in 2010 comparing pay between women and men. CREW's 2005 report showed that 58% of men in commercial real estate reported income over $150,000, but only 24% of women earned as much. Three times as many women as men earned less than $75,000.

Apart from pay levels and executive losses, an issue that cropped up during the recession relates to the high level of restructuring and distress in portfolios, says Ayers. A number of CREW members have alleged that female financial officers or corporate attorneys who present unpopular deal restructurings to resolve distress situations, including properties under water, are dealt with more harshly than their male counterparts and more often lose their jobs, Ayers says.

“The woman who brings that deal to the table with the same options that a man brings, tends to get no support. There's a feeling across the board that the expectation is different for guys than for the women, and that women have to perform extraordinary feats to continue to be held in high esteem.”

A new beginning

Chicago-based executive search consultant Sharon Krohn deals with the aftermath of downsizing, as a stream of laid-off developers, brokers, lenders and architects come to her for help. “There have been furloughs, but more straight out downsizing and elimination of whole lines of business.”

Clients learn to move from the old, pre-recession economy to new positions. For example, a woman who worked for a developer can use her financial skills and portfolio knowledge to help a bank process foreclosed properties.

One response to bloodletting in the workplace is that countless women are starting their own companies, creating niches and becoming their own bosses rather than endure the caprices of corporate life. Owning a business is a way to keep more of the revenue they generate.

Tanya Little was chief operating officer of the U.S. mortgage capital business at RBC Capital Markets, Royal Bank of Canada's investment banking division.

She led the team that developed the strategic plan for a lending unit that originated $2.3 billion in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) in its first year. But as lending evaporated and CMBS was shunned, her unit was eliminated.

“Everyone who worked on [the CMBS unit] was laid off. It was just like every other bank and lending institution out there. There are many products that are not sold anymore,” says Little.

In October, she and her twin sister, Angel Benschneider, co-founded Dallas-based Hart Advisors Group, which manages assets of 3 million sq. ft. of commercial space and is growing its client base.

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