Seven charts on women, work and education in South Africa

South Africa has extraordinary women. They head newsrooms, run research projects, own businesses, win medals and score championship-winning goals. Yet, on average women earn 20% less than men.

The good news is that the gap in pay has narrowed over the past 10 years – in 2011 women earned 28% less than men – but the higher up the salary scale you climb, the fewer women you’ll find, and women are less likely to be formally employed than men.

To be fair, for incomes up to R500,000 a year (about R42,000 a month) men on average earn 8% more than women. But as taxable income increases the number of women decreases.

For example, among the people who earned more than a million rand a year (about R83,000 a month) in 2020, there were nearly three times as many men (178,133) than women (64,098). This is an improvement on 2014 when the SA Revenue Service reported 19,232 women earning over R1-million a year.

Women are less likely to be employed than men. About 40% of women are categorised as “not economically active”, which means they are not employed, officially unemployed, or discouraged job seekers. This category can include, for example, students, homemakers, retirees or people with disabilities that don’t allow them to work.

Young women, between 20 and 34 years old are less likely to be employed than young men. At the beginning of 2022, only 28% of young women were employed compared with 37% of young men.

At school, girls seem to generally do better than boys. For example, in 2021, more girls than boys in the 17- to 19-year age group passed their final National Senior Certificate exams.

More girls passed the final science and maths exams than boys – 79,521 girls passed science with over 30% compared with 56,394 boys, and 84,897 girls passed maths compared with 64,280 boys. 

This pattern continues into tertiary education. Between 2014 and 2019 roughly 60% of the students enrolled in tertiary education institutions were women and, as expected, 60% of the students who graduated with a degree in that period were women. More women than men graduated with business, commerce, science and technology degrees – fields that are often seen as traditionally male.

More male students enrol in science, engineering and technology degrees. For example, 24,000 more men than women enrolled for one of those degrees in 2014. Five years later the gap dropped to 14,000 more men than women. Nevertheless, more women than men graduated with science, engineering and technology degrees, according to data in the 2019 VitalStats Public Higher Education report. Between 2014 and 2019, the number of women graduating with these degrees increased by 21% compared with an 11% increase in men.