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The purpose of this paper is to clarify how annual reports of public housing and commercial real estate companies contribute in “doing gender” of the real estate industry in Sweden. How the issue of gender is dealt with in photographs, in two different types of organizations, with different corporate and business strategies, is important as they play a significant role in constructing the industry itself. Are there any differences in how they perceive gender, and what constitutes gender of the industry?

Analysis of photographs in annual reports, 14 public housing companies and eight commercial real estate companies, in the year of 2011.

The paper provides empirical insights about how “gender is done” in annual reports, men alone are shown more often as employees and both women and men are portrayed in stereotypical positions. Women are depicted more often as young and also presented in “token positions”.

Because of the chosen research approach, in studying only one year, a longitudinal study would be recommended for future studies.

The paper includes implications for the development of gender symbols and images representing the industry, in how gender is done in public situations as in annual reports. This is not only important for the industry itself but also to stakeholders involved with the industry.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how photographs shown in annual reports reveal gender structure.

The purpose of the paper is to create an understanding of the gender structure in the real-estate industry in Sweden. Interviews were made with younger female and male graduates. The purpose is to distinguish how these younger graduates working in the industry react to the gender structure.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 graduate younger women and men working in the real-estate industry in Sweden. As an input to the interviews a mapping of the gender structure was conducted, using annual reports of commercial real-estate companies and public housing companies in Sweden.

The paper provides empirical insights that there were not any greater differences in the gender structure in Sweden, between 2001 and 2008 and none of the respondents were surprised. The symbols of men and the hegemonic masculinity – men more often holding leading and technical positions while women more often hold supporting positions in the industry – are important to understand the gender structure. In the industry the hegemonic engineering masculinity is also apparent.

The limitation of the paper might be the time period of the mapping; a longer time period might have shown a change in the structure and the amount of young female and male graduates interviewed.

The paper includes implication for the development of the gender structure – awareness is the first step, in order to retain talented women and men.

The paper fulfils an identified need to study the gender structure of the real-estate industry.