Including Women Means Powering Growth

13  August 2025

This Women’s Month, we spotlight the economic power of inclusion. The fundamental freedom to work and earn is often frustratingly elusive for women. This inequity is reason enough to pay close attention to the data on women’s participation in the labour market, but there is also a compelling economic reason to do so: growing our labour market equitably benefits everyone.

Raising the employment prospects of women is not a zero-sum game that redistributes employment away from men. It is a powerful economic multiplier, one that could increase global gross domestic product by 20%, the World Bank calculates. Closing gender gaps in employment and entrepreneurship could also boost average wealth by 14% because including women in the labour market unlocks potential and raises productivity. Gender inclusion brings complementary skills, distinct insights, imagination and perspectives to the workplace, all of which enhance innovation. Inclusive teams that embrace gender diversity are also more likely to challenge entrenched assumptions, explore unconventional ideas, and generate breakthrough solutions.

The social benefits of women’s participation in the workforce are significant. In South Africa, economically empowered women have been shown to invest more in their families and communities, improving health, education, and reducing child mortality. These intergenerational benefits ripple outward, strengthening social cohesion and national development. 

Such benefits explain why, in 2014, the G20 countries made a historic commitment to reduce the labour force participation gap by 25% by 2025, known as the ‘Brisbane Goal’. A decade on, South Africa is one of nine G20 countries to have achieved this, adding over one million women to the labour market between 2012 and 2024. South Africa is also one of the G20 countries to see a large reduction in the disparity in earnings between men and women, which was achieved by tying the minimum wage to increases in inflation, lifting the earnings floor and protecting minimum wage workers. This has had a significant effect on workers in the care economy, including domestic workers, who are disproportionately female and often earn minimum wage. But gender disparities persist. Women continue to face systemic barriers to entering and staying in the labour market, with the labour force participation rate for women at 54,9%% compared to 65,6% for men (QLFS Q2, 2025). 

Lack of education is not the problem; young women are more educated than their male peers: 116 women hold a matric or higher qualification for every 100 men under 35, and approximately 50% more women have degree-equivalent qualifications. The problem is that women face far bigger barriers to entering the labour market in the first place. They do more unpaid care work, have less mobility, navigate more safety issues, and struggle against biases that exclude them from higher-paid opportunities. Understanding these barriers and how they intersect is the first step in closing the gender employment gap.

The foremost of these barriers is unpaid care. Women spend far more time than men doing housework, childcare, and other care activities, which limits their time to engage in paid activities. The International Labour Organisation estimates that across the G20 countries, women still complete about twice as much unpaid domestic and care work as men. In South Africa, for every man staying out of the labour force due to homemaking responsibilities, more than eight women are in the same position.

Women’s unequal care demands are exacerbated by safety concerns and reduced mobility. Women are disproportionately affected by gender-based violence when using public transport or walking to and from stations, especially at night. This influences women’s decisions around bus routes, affordability, and access, often forcing them to rely on e-hailing or taxis, which are more expensive.

Even when women overcome these barriers and enter the working world, they face penalties once they get there. Gender bias and occupational segmentation (the uneven distribution of demographic groups across occupations) exclude them from higher-paying roles, and precarious contracts and lack of support structures push them out of the formal economy quicker than men. Historical trends indicate men consistently earn more, with median monthly earnings for women clocking at 25% lower than for men in 2022. Even in sectors where women are overrepresented, such as care, retail, education and community-related work, roles are often informal, underpaid, and lack protections.

So how do we get more women working? By designing employment interventions that are equitable by intent and inclusive by impact. Furthermore, many of the structural barriers that keep women out of the workforce also work against other historically excluded groups. This is why Vision 2030, the national strategy for youth employment, was developed with an equity lens that benefits all. In this issue of Breaking Barriers, we spotlight how employers, policy-makers and others can ensure their investments work harder to benefit women, which means benefiting everyone. 

Insight 2: Addressing the barriers that keep women out of employment can also invite others in.

In the formal economy, when women do gain a foothold, it tends to be less firm than men’s. Our research has shown that among young people who have reported more than one earning opportunity on SA Youth, men were 5% more likely to report a second opportunity in the formal sector, compared to women. We know why: women face transport and safety issues and carry a far heavier care burden than men. They fall out of the formal economy at higher rates than men, contributing to high churn.

Reducing churn and keeping women in their jobs benefits everyone, not just women: employers realise the productivity gains from retaining more of their experienced workers, and male employees benefit from better working conditions too. Solutions include flexible hours or work-from-home options, allowing employees, particularly women who are primary caregivers, to balance care responsibilities with their jobs.

Procera, a GBS employer, has taken meaningful steps to foster a more inclusive and supportive work environment. In its Collections business unit, the company has implemented shorter shifts (7am–2pm and 2pm–8pm), which contribute to improved stress management, healthier lifestyle patterns, and a reduction in overtime costs. These flexible working hours are especially beneficial for women balancing professional and personal responsibilities.

Other inclusive solutions address the commuting penalty by offering transport solutions for employees, which makes jobs easier and safer to get to, particularly for those who do shift work that straddles dark hours. This ensures employees aren’t forced to use public transport during unsafe times – a disproportionately riskier activity for women. GBS employer Sigma Connected, whose workforce comprises 65% women, provides free shuttles to their employees from key locations in the morning, and free door-to-door transport for junior employees finishing at 6pm or later. Another GBS employer, Concentrix, provides door-to-door transport from 7pm, including home pickups for 10pm shifts. Other solutions, like that offered by skilling provider Shadow Careers, give an advanced stipend to assist with travel to work in the first month. These transport solutions are available to everyone, men and women, and are particularly critical to supporting youth employment and retention, especially during the initial period of employment.

Some solutions are gender-specific at the point of delivery but have wider benefits for families and communities. Concentrix, for instance, offers 50% paid maternity leave after one year of service and menopause support policies. It has an onsite clinic and wellness centre, with qualified nurses supporting pregnancy, menstrual, and other gender-specific health needs.

Ensuring decent, equitable pay is a non-negotiable for creating an inclusive labour market. While South African law advances this principle, socioeconomic conditions and persistent burdens create barriers to achieving it. Unpaid care responsibilities, lack of mobility, and transport and safety concerns all prevent women from working the hours needed and taking up the jobs offering the most competitive salaries. Their resulting lower wages provide less incentive to stay in the workforce, especially in the face of the extra costs that women face in dressing professionally, commuting safely and backfilling their domestic and caring responsibilities.

All growth sectors can ensure that women and young people don’t get screened out at the first step of the hiring process due to a perceived lack of skills and experience ‘on paper’. Harambee continues to innovate systems that allow workseekers to signal their potential beyond traditional qualifications or work experience, which young people and women, in particular, may lack. For instance, because young women take on more domestic and family responsibilities than men, and at a younger age, they develop broad, transferable skills like budgeting, organisation, social coordination and communication. But in a traditional CV format, these are, at best, invisible. At worst, they show up as career gaps. 

The recently launched ‘SA Youth Inclusive CV’ is designed to help young people signal their potential to employers in a more equitable and evidence-based way. Early evidence suggests that adding inclusive proxies to traditional ways of screening for employment increases hiring up to 38%, providing young people with an alternative signal of ability. For employers, this reduces search costs and friction for hiring youth without traditional work experience. Since its launch in June, the inclusive CV has been downloaded over 114,699 times, with 35% of young people going on to update their qualifications or experiences after download and 24% downloading it multiple times. We are already seeing that the uptake of this tool is strong among young women (71.9% of downloads are from women), and we will continue to track its use.

Inclusion is a national priority and will determine South Africa’s ability to reach the bold targets we have set for the next five years of reducing youth unemployment by 10-20%. Improving women’s inclusion, earning power and retention in the formal economy is necessary to get closer to this vision, and benefits men at the same time. 

But prioritising inclusion in the formal economy won’t be enough. Sustainable pathways for women also need to be forged into the informal economy.