Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters)

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Browsing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters) by SDG "SDG-5: Gender equality"

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    A study of gender differences in job finding strategies
    (University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06-30) Ralefeta, Neo; Posel, Dorrit
    Men and women in the South African labour market face different sets of challenges with women persistently having higher unemployment rates when compared to men. How they search for and find work is an important aspect of the country’s labour market and may inform policy solutions on how to address the large unemployment gaps between men and women. Active job searching is a costly exercise and individuals may use passive searching methods and rely on their social networks to connect them to job openings. This research report examines the differences in job finding strategies between adult men and women; it groups unemployed individuals into searching and non-searching categories and considers their individual and household characteristics. Using data from the National Income Dynamics study from years 2012 and 2014/2015, the study shows that there is a positive correlation between men’s search status and their employment outcomes. However, this is not the case for women whose employment outcomes are not influenced by whether they search for employment or not. For women, a negative correlation is found between social reproductive work and employment outcomes, and a positive correlation is found between educational attainment and employment outcomes. Social reproductive work hinders women more than men from actively searching for employment and being a female lowers the probability of finding employment. This research report contributes to the literature by providing a national analysis of gendered job searching strategies and employment outcomes by using recent nationally representative data.
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    The disproportionate effect of transport availability on the poor in South Africa: a gender perspective
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Everts, Lee; Posel,Dorrit
    Issues relating to the cost and accessibility of transportation for the poor in South Africa have been thoroughly studied; however, research on the unequal impact on women and men is deficient. Thus, this study's purpose is to explore if there are gender variations in transportation disadvantage and costs, and if so, to probe possible reasons. To compare gender differences in mode of transport and expenditure, the 2020 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) from Statistics South Africa is used. Households are classified into female-dominated ( all adults in households are female), male-dominated (all adults are male) and mixed households (both female and male adults present in households). This method is used as it helps to distinguish gender differences in the economic resources available to each household type (Posel & Hall, 2021). Descriptive statistics on mode of transport (private, public and walking) and transport cost as a share of budget by household type and purpose of transport (travel to place of employment and educational institution) are first provided. A multinomial regression is then used to investigate gender differences in mode of transport in a multivariate context and an Ordinary Least Squares Regression (OLS) is used to explore gender differences in budget allocations to transport. The analysis finds that when household characteristics across household types are not controlled for, no significant differences in mode of travel between female- and male-dominated households are evident. Once included, people in female-dominated households are significantly less likely than others to walk and more likely to use public transport. Moreover, female-dominated households spend more on school transportation than male-dominated households, as well as transport shares allocated to work travel
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    The impact of COVID-19 on the Gender Wage Gap in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Ngcobo, Khwezi
    The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in large distributional changes in the South African labour market. Prior to the pandemic, South African women were compensated less relative to South African men. This paper applies the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gender wage gap between February 2020, April 2020, June 2020 and March 2021. Results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic widened the existing monthly gender wage gap, while barely altering the hourly wage gap over the given period. The study finds that the main contributor to the gender wage gap is discrimination in the South African labour market. Key variables that contributed to the discrimination component across all periods are population group and having children aged below 7 years. Gender differences in the composition of the employment sector, having young children and hours of work also significantly contributed to the gender wage gap. These results suggest a need for gender- sensitive policies to improve the labour market position of disadvantaged individuals