Cape Town - Stats SA’s Gender Series IX report on empowerment of women portrays a positive increase in women’s share in the working-age class since 2016.
However, DA MP and DA Women’s Network spokesperson Annerie Weber said there was still a long way to go to realise that women were generally equal to men and should be respected as such.
The report showed that despite an increase of women in the working population, men were still getting more employment, with the gender gap of 0.778 in monthly median earnings between men and women showing inequalities.
Although the report said pay parity was only reached among those with tertiary education, it added that women continued to be more unlikely to find employment than men.
In the public sector, men still hold the majority of senior management posts and middle management positions.
The report said the Cabinet reached parity for the first time in 2019, since the beginning of democracy, while Parliament saw an increase in the representation of women.
This year, three out of four women run businesses in the informal sector. The figures were 76.7% in 2017 and 77.5% in 2022, and this showed no marked difference, while men in the informal sector showed a 5.3% point increase over this period.
A summary of the report read: “The difference between male- and female- run businesses operating in the formal sector was 10.9 percentage points in 2017, a decline was observed for both sexes in 2022.”
Moreover, gender differences in the formal sector decreased from a parity of 0.67% in 2017 to 0.76% this year, pointing to a semblance of progress.
The overall unemployment rates increased by 6.8 percentage points from 27.7% in 2017 to 34.5% in 2022. Men and women aged from 25 and 34 showed the most unemployed when compared with other age groups.
The report points to the economic inactivity rate being higher among women than their male counterparts across all categories.
Social grant recipients increased by 4.8 percentage points for both men and women between 2017 and 2021, with men recording the highest increase of grant recipients of 5.6% and women recording an increase of 4.2 percentage points.
Weber said: “We have good legislation … But you need to change minds of men and women. We are not winning the fight (for gender equity) as long as men look down on women. It comes down to how we raise boys.”
He said there was a need for big business’s buy-in into gender equity.