By Wanique Block
In South Africa, despite the various strides that have been taken to promote gender equality across all industries and departments, there still unfortunately lies a huge gender pay gap between men and women in South Africa.
Black women and women of colour in South Africa are unfortunately greatly impacted by this.
For International Women’s Day earlier this year the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) called for equality and gender pay transparency by all employers.
“In South Africa, women earn up to 35% less than men for doing work of equal value yet nearly 38% of households are dependent on the income that a woman brings home. Even highly educated and qualified middle-class women, especially those working in the private sector, are still finding it difficult to escape gender pay disparity as the old boys’ network still favours their male counterparts”, Fedusa said.
On Feel Good with Andy Maqondwana, Andy highlights the unfortunate effects of the gender pay gap and asks listeners about the time they found out they were under paid for the work they do or services they rendered.
In a voice note one listener shared how she was paid less than a white colleague of hers.
“A bit of a sensitive one hey… In 2007; I was still a Senior National Buyer in the private sector. And when a white man who retirement, I was offered his position. Doing exactly was he did, but for half what he use to get”.
She continued: “I said to myself, we as Black people need to stop being excited about being ‘the first Black anything’. That at some point needs to stop! We are worthy to be where we are, we work hard to be where we are! We need to get paid what we are worth!”
Another listener, Tebogo noted how she realised that she was the only one at her work who did not get a yearly increase.
“Not only did I find out I was the only one who didn’t get an increase but now another lady got a 120% increase. It was also brought to my attention that another Black women was earning a third of what her colleagues were earning”, she said.
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