SA's gender pay gap: Why women end up at lower-paying firms than men
A new study highlights a factor not paid much attention before - simply WHERE women work in the formal sector.
Woman at work, women, office. Pexels/Christina Morillo
CapeTalk's John Maytham is joined by the co-author of the study, Ihsaan Bassier, economics researcher at the University of Surrey.
South Africa has a serious gender pay gap - in the formal sector, women on average get paid 12% less than men.
A new study highlights an aspect not explored much previously; that the company you work for makes the biggest difference.
It tracked millions of workers between 2010 and 2018, using tax data
The usual suspects – occupation, hours, experience – explain some of this gender pay gap, says study co-author Ihsaan Bassier, but an often overlooked reason is simply where women work.
The companies that hire women play a huge role in shaping their lifetime earnings, emphasizes the researcher at the University of Sussex's economics department.
"We found what others also have found - about half of the gender gap is explained by things that are fixed, like occupation, But the new finding that our study highlights is that the other half is really just about which firms women versus men work at."
Ihsaan Bassier, Researcher - University of Surrey Economics Dept.
"If you take a man or woman with exactly the same occupation, exactly the same profile in terms of experience, education and everything else that you can think of that is fixed, on average women are STILL earning a lot less than men... and it's purely because women tend to find jobs at firms that are low-paying to all employees."
Ihsaan Bassier, Researcher - University of Surrey Economics Dept.
This, in turn, can partly be explained by the role of women in childbearing and childcare, which affects their hiring potential particularly during their 30s.
"It's really these childbearing constraints that are forcing women to take jobs that are, for example, closer to their child's caring facilities or jobs that require a certain number of hours."
Ihsaan Bassier, Researcher - University of Surrey Economics Dept.
"That again is the result of the norms that exist in the country about who really should shoulder the burden of taking care of children. It's also about firms discriminating against women during these childbearing years."
Ihsaan Bassier, Researcher - University of Surrey Economics Dept.
Scroll up to listen to the interview and click here to read Bassier's detailed report on the study