South African women hit hard by unemployment and inequality, Stats SA reveals

Durban — South African women struggle with unemployment and workforce inequality, a recent Statics SA survey revealed.

According to Stats SA, women in SA continue to shoulder a disproportionate burden of unemployment, under employment and lower workforce participation compared with men.

This is partly because women are more likely to take on household duties, child-rearing, and other responsibilities that limit their opportunities in the labour market.

Trends in labour force participation and absorption rates for men and women from 2014 to 2024 indicate that fewer women have been participating in the labour market when compared to men, it showed.

For women, Labour Force Participation Rates increased across all education levels except for those with other tertiary qualifications, who experienced a decline of 1 percentage point.

The most significant increases in labour force participation were observed among women with less than a matric qualification (rising from 40.0% to 43.1% – an increase of 3.1 percentage points) and graduates (rising from 85.7% to 87.2%, an increase of 1.5 percentage points) over the 10-year period.

In terms of the absorption rate, men consistently reported higher rates than women from 2014 to 2024, with gender differences ranging from 9.0 to 12.5 percentage points.

The absorption rate for women remained below 40.0%, declining by 1.1 percentage points from 36.9% in the second quarter of 2014 to 35.8% in the second quarter of 2024. The highest absorption rate for women was 38.3%, recorded in the first quarter of 2017.

The data reveals that the gap between absorption and labour force participation rates has widened for both genders.

As this gap continues to grow, it suggests that a larger proportion of those entering the labour market are facing unemployment.

For men, the gap increased from 15.2 percentage points in the second quarter of 2014 to 20.7 percentage points in the second quarter of 2024.

For women, the gap expanded even more rapidly, rising from 14.0 percentage points to 20.0 percentage points over the same period, it read.

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