News & Resources

For younger women entering the industry, focus on building strong foundations in whatever functional area you are starting out in. If you are in marketing, understand who your customers are and how they are reached. If you are in technology, seek to understand the business you support. Building strong foundations can be hard but it’s absolutely worth it and will pay dividends in the long term. While you are building foundations, take some time to invest in relationships as well – whether it’s with a boss, a peer, or another leader at the company. Make those investments early as they also will benefit you throughout your career. And then lastly – be agile by learning quickly, make your mistakes early and move past them.

The change within the industry is a work in progress. I am proud of the work we are doing at Enact. Women make up over half of Enact’s workforce, and our employees have achieved—and they continue to receive— equal pay for equal work. At the leadership level, we are continuing to create more gender parity. As of the end of 2023, 20% of our executive leadership team were women and 60% of our Board committee chairpersons were women. I’m pleased by what we’re doing at Enact, and what we’re seeing in the industry, and excited to see progress continue as we push the industry to look more like the people it serves.

Enact’s core values are excellence, improvement, and connection. To really live and realize these values, we need to have diversity in thought and approach as we look to enable the dream of homeownership. While generalizing the experiences of women as in any way singular is not usually helpful, it is fair to recognize that women have a different set of experiences to men, and these voices are needed at Enact as we live our core values. To truly achieve excellence and continue to improve, we need a range of voices and experiences providing input so that we can achieve the best results. Similarly, a variety of experiences and perspectives is essential to forging better and deeper connections and fostering a truly inclusive environment.

As highlighted by an Urban Institute study, homeownership by women has tripled since 1990, largely driven by the closing gap in income, labor participation and education between women and men. While this is good progress, more can be done to help women transition from renting to homeownership by addressing the misconceptions around homeownership including the myth that a homebuyer must have 20% in funds available for a down payment.

At Enact, we have dedicated educational resources for first-time homebuyers that can be leveraged by our 1,700 lender partners and their borrowers to assist with the demystification of the homeownership journey including the use of mortgage insurance to overcome the upfront 20% down payment. In addition, more flexible considerations during the application process, such as employment breaks and rental history, could create the openings that women need to enter the homeownership market. On the other hand, home affordability is not just a women’s issue but is a broader issue as mortgage rates have risen and housing supply has not kept up with housing demand resulting in home prices outside the reach of many first-time home buyers. Home affordability solutions will need to be multi-faceted to overcome these challenges, and include a decline in mortgage rates, the development of land ready for housing and the access to labor to drive construction.