An empirical analysis of gender disparities in employment in South Africa: A Yun decomposition approach

Abstract

South Africa, the economic giant of Southern Africa, is still struggling to eliminate gender labour market inequalities, especially the gender employment gap, despite efforts made by the post-Apartheid government. This study aims to analyse the sources of gender labour inequalities in the South African labour market concerning labour force participation and employment. The sources of gender labour market inequalities were analysed using the cross-sectional data from South African labour Market Dynamics, the probit regression, the Yun (2005) decomposition techniques and the inverse Mill’s ratio to control for sample selection bias. The study focused on observable and measurable factors only. The study's results revealed that marital status, education, age and province of origin were the major drivers of the female employment gap of 0.688 and 0.0451. Females in South Africa were also found to be subjected to female employment discrimination with a perceived discrimination likelihood of 0.0766 and 0.106 when using expanded and strict definitions of unemployment respectively. More of the female employment gap was attributed to differences in individual characteristics.