SA’s gender wage gap shows little sign of abating, with the Covid-19 pandemic entrenching pay and representation disparities between men and women in top jobs across the country’s JSE-listed boardrooms and businesses.
At SA’s largest firms, women in top leadership roles are earning 72c for every R1 earned by their male counterparts — or a median gender pay gap of 28% — according to research from advisory firm PwC released on Thursday.
Though this is an improvement on 2020’s 45% gap at the JSE’s top 40 companies, gender pay disparities at medium-sized and small-cap companies have worsened to 46% and 27% respectively, in 2021.
Meanwhile, representation of women at the top levels of business has stagnated, with only 13% of executive directors, including CEOs and CFOs, being women.
“It’s evident that the pay gap has remained stagnant and it’s not showing any rapid improvement over the last few years,” said Andreas Horak, PwC’s Reward Practice co-lead and director in PwC’s people and organisation department.
The pandemic has thrown the spotlight on growing inequality, worsened by SA’s 7% GDP crash in 2020, both within companies and society at large.
Women appear to have born the brunt of the effect of Covid-19 as they have been disproportionately affected by jobs losses, and have had to bear the weight of unpaid labour during the lockdowns, according to the PwC Executive directors: practices and remuneration trends report.
Gender pay disparities were identified across all sectors bar one. Basic materials — which includes SA largest mining houses — was the only sector where female employees earned a 4% premium on their male peers.
The worst performers were in the consumer services and real-estate sectors, where the pay gap stood at 41% and 35% respectively.
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