ESPN and Real Estate Career Paths

Twice now, in the last two weeks, the sports world has been rocked by women athletes behaving like.....ummmm, well, athletes. The first incident was the Canadian Women's Hockey Team celebrating their gold medal victory in their locker room with beer and cigars???? The IOC was appalled. " Not the image they wanted to promote..." Not being good role models, etc, etc.
The second was last weekend when, during a women's basketball game, one player landed a punch into the face of another. Players and tempers flared and there was a little bit of a brawl.
The sports world ( and supposedly the rest of us) are supposed to be aghast.
I loved the sports commentators on ESPN Sunday morning when the one suggested a certain amount of female superiority because at least the player was actually able to land her punch.
The point here is- why are we surprised or why do we expect women athletes to behave differently from the other gender? It has been a long, long road for women's athletics to gain even grudging acceptance. Now it is almost there. I do not remember another year in which women's basketball is getting the attention that it is now. Why then are we surprised that they celebrate, get mad, get physical, you know, just like the boys?Apparently we are still expected to be "ladies" whether on the court, the ice, or in the locker room.
Alas, another double standard has now reared it's ugly head. Let's just be grateful we haven't resorted to dog fighting or having multiple "mistresses". (?) ( I don't know what the male equivalent of "mistress" is......paramour, lover??? What?)
What has all of this to do with real estate, you might and should ask?
Well, historically, real estate was not a welcoming career path for women. For example, here in Columbus, women were not allowed to join the Columbus Board of Realtors until 1964. 1964!!!! But then there have been few welcoming career paths for women except maybe the scrubbing floors ones , emptying bed pans ones or the ones we don't talk about in polite society. ( You know, there is a pasta sauce named for them.) And yet, women are wonderful at real estate.
Women understand the concept of "home" and "where the heart is". They get the nesting thing and the importance of having a respite from the world. They don't have a problem with holding a client's hand through the process, listening to the emotions that go along with moving to a strange city, closing and selling a parent's house, moving on with life after divorce and relocating children. They understand the joy and excitement of the new baby, the wedding, the job promotion.
More and more, women have found real estate to be an extremely satisfying career both personally and financially. There are actually more women in the sales force than men.
Things change drastically when you go to the next level though.....management. It is still deja vu all over again. Some things never change. You really didn't think this was going to have a happy ending, did you?