A recent study, based on administrative tax records, analyzed data from millions of formal sector workers over eight years and found that women earned, on average, 12% less than men.
This gender pay gap in South Africa cannot be explained solely by comparing individual salaries. It was revealed that about 45% of this gap is linked to women more frequently working in lower-paying companies. The remaining 55% is presumably due to uncounted differences between workers, as well as broader labor market biases, rather than direct discrimination within firms.
The income disparity manifests at three levels: industry, profession, and employer. Women are disproportionately concentrated in sectors with smaller premiums, such as retail, education, and personal care, while men dominate higher-paying fields, including mining, construction, and manufacturing.
The StatsSA analysis, published in August, confirmed this persistence: women comprised 44% of the country's workforce, but they were underrepresented in the transport, warehousing, and automotive trade sectors.
Occupational segregation creates a second division. Data for the second quarter of 2026 shows that office work accounted for 17% among employed women compared to 5.8% among men, while domestic work made up 10.8% versus 0.5%. Managerial positions were held by 7.1% of women compared to 10% of men.
Furthermore, two people performing comparable work may earn different wages simply because their employers pay at different levels. Professor Linda Meyer, MD from Rosebank International and a visiting professor at Nelson Mandela University, notes: 'These divisions do not exist in isolation. Layering upon each other, sector, profession, and employer can place workers on sharply divergent earning career trajectories, allowing disadvantage to accumulate from one level to the next.'
Deeper inequality arises even before salary comparison. In the second quarter of 2026, only 7.3 million out of 21.3 million working-age women in South Africa were employed, with female labor force participation at 54.9% compared to 64.4% for men.
Among formal workers, the pay gap between employers significantly widened from the mid-twenties to the mid-forties. Although women changed jobs as often as men, they were less likely to move to higher-paying companies.
This divergence coincides with the period of child-rearing. According to StatsSA data, women provided for 88.2% of the 2.4 million people not in the labor force due to caregiving responsibilities. Unpaid domestic labor limits earning potential and job options for women. Educational paths also diverge early: despite women making up the majority of post-school graduates, men still surpass women in the number of graduates in physical sciences, engineering, and manufacturing.
Meyer emphasizes: 'Education itself does not determine salary, but different fields of study open different professional paths. The labor market gap is shaped by a series of interconnected pressures, not by one free and isolated decision about which job to take.'
Equal pay laws prohibiting unfair differences for work of equal value remain necessary but insufficient. As the Stellenbosch Business School analysis states, employers must check remuneration practices through transparency and regular pay audits.
However, audits only reveal internal inequality; they do not help women enter higher-paying industries or companies. Addressing the broader gap requires support for childcare, flexible work arrangements without financial penalties, fairer recruitment, and stronger pathways into premium sectors.
Pay equity must be assessed not only by direct comparison but also by whether women have equal opportunities to enter and advance in well-paid parts of the economy. Until South Africa resolves both unfair pay differences and structural barriers affecting career paths, women will continue to negotiate salaries with limited earning potential.