South Africa’s Gender Pay Gap Starts Before the Payslip
Comparing women’s and men’s salaries reveals only part of South Africa’s gender pay gap. Recent research shows that a substantial share is linked to the companies they enter and whether those employers generally pay higher or lower wages across their workforces.
South Africa’s gender pay gap cannot be understood by comparing individual salaries alone. While direct pay discrimination remains part of the problem, inequality takes root much earlier. The industry a woman enters, the work available to her and the employer she is able to reach can each influence what she is likely to earn.
An eight-year South African study makes this clear. Using administrative tax records, researchers tracked millions of formal-sector workers and found that women earned, on average, 12% less than men. About 45% of that gap, equivalent to 5.5 percentage points, was associated with women being more concentrated in lower-paying companies.
Because the study did not compare women and men performing the same work, the remaining 55%, or approximately 6.5 percentage points, cannot be read as a measure of direct pay discrimination. However, the researchers suggested that it could reflect unmeasured differences between individual workers, as well as bias against women operating across the labour market rather than within any one company.
The findings carry a clear implication. Any explanation of the gender pay gap that stops at individual workplaces is incomplete. The question is not only how employers pay women, but which sectors, positions and companies women are able to reach.
Where women work shapes what they earn
The gender earnings divide runs through three levels of the labour market. Women and men tend to work in different industries and occupations, and for companies that pay at different levels. Each of these divisions affects earning prospects in a different way.
The first divide is between industries, because sectors do not offer the same earning opportunities. The study found that women entering formal employment were disproportionately concentrated in sectors offering lower pay premiums, meaning less of an earnings advantage. These included education, retail and personal care. Men were over-represented in higher-premium industries such as construction, mining and manufacturing.
This is not simply a historical pattern. A Stats SA analysis published in August 2026 found that women occupied 44 of every 100 jobs nationally. They accounted for more than half of employment in personal services, accommodation, food and beverages, and retail, but had their lowest representation in construction, mining, transport and storage, and the motor trade. These figures measure representation rather than earnings, but they confirm that the sectoral divide persists.
Occupation creates a second divide. Women and men may work in the same industry but perform different kinds of work with different levels of authority and prospects. According to Q2 2026 data, clerical work accounted for 17% of employed women and 5.8% of employed men, while domestic work accounted for 10.8% and 0.5% respectively. Managerial positions were held by 7.1% of employed women and 10% of employed men. These differences influence access to authority, advancement and better pay.
The employer adds a third layer. Two people can perform comparable work in the same sector yet earn different amounts because their employers pay at different levels.
“These divisions do not operate in isolation. Layered together, sector, occupation and employer can place workers on sharply different earnings paths, allowing disadvantage to accumulate from one level to the next,” says Prof Linda Meyer, MD of Rosebank International and Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University.
Why women’s access to better-paid work remains unequal
A deeper economic inequality arises before pay can even be compared. Women are less likely than men to be in paid employment at all. Stats SA reported that only 7.3 million of South Africa’s 21.3 million working-age women were employed in the second quarter of 2026. That is little more than one in three. Women’s labour-force participation was also lower than men’s, at 54.9% compared with 64.4%. These figures don’t measure unequal pay, but they show that disadvantage can arise before questions of salary or advancement begin.
Entering formal employment doesn’t end the divide. According to the study, the gap between the average pay levels of women’s and men’s employers was very small in their early 20s, but widened considerably between the mid-20s and mid-40s. Women changed employers about as frequently as men, yet their moves were less likely to take them to better-paying companies. Women returning to formal employment after unemployment or informal work also tended to enter lower-paying companies than men.
The gap widens across the same years in which many women are raising children. While the study does not prove that care responsibilities cause the divergence, the timing is too significant to ignore, particularly when homemaking falls so unevenly between women and men. The latest published Stats SA figures show that women accounted for 2.1 million, or 88.2%, of the 2.4 million people outside the labour force for this reason. The unpaid work that sustains families and enables others to hold paid jobs can restrict women’s own earnings and advancement. For employed women, care responsibilities may also make predictable hours, flexibility or proximity to home decisive, narrowing the jobs they can realistically consider.
The pathways into different kinds of work, however, can begin to diverge much earlier through education. Although women make up the majority of students in South Africa’s post-school system, the latest DHET statistics show that men still outnumber women among graduates in fields including physical and computer sciences, manufacturing and engineering.
“Education alone doesn’t determine pay, but different fields of study open different occupational pathways. The labour-market divide is shaped by a series of connected pressures, not one free and isolated decision about which job to accept,” says Prof Meyer.
Closing the gender pay gap requires more than equal pay
Equal-pay laws remain essential, but they can address only part of the divide. South African law prohibits unfair differences in pay for work that is the same, substantially similar or of equal value. Yet legal protection has limited effect when disparities remain hidden. As a Stellenbosch Business School analysis argues, employers must examine their remuneration practices, identify unjustified differences and correct them. Greater transparency, regular pay audits and effective enforcement would make inequality easier to expose and harder to defend.
But a pay audit can uncover inequality within a company. It cannot help women enter the industries, occupations and companies where better-paid work is concentrated. Closing the wider gap also requires childcare support, flexible work that doesn’t carry a pay penalty, fairer recruitment and stronger pathways into higher-paying fields and employers.
Equal pay cannot be judged only by what happens once a woman and a man work side by side. It must also be judged by whether women have an equal opportunity to enter, advance and remain in the parts of the economy where secure, well-paid work is available. Until South Africa confronts both unfair pay differences and the structural barriers influencing women’s employment paths, women will continue to reach salary negotiations with their earning potential already constrained.
*Information provided by the publicist.
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